


Auld Lang Syne

by Star_flaming



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Cultural Differences, Familial Relationships, M/M, Off-screen Relationship(s), Superstition, Wakes & Funerals, lots of cooking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9805499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_flaming/pseuds/Star_flaming
Summary: “Mother, who are they, exactly?”“She was your father’s mistress,” spat Maratelle. “He fathered that boy and left them behind when we fled. Finally saw reason.”“So Armitage is our half-brother?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Who's ready for a WILDLY AU fic?

Arkanis was wet, Aberforth thought. That was the best way to describe it. Surely he should have noted just how wet it was, but memories from childhood were always kinder than the truth. He had barely remembered it anyway. Brendol Jr. remembered it very well though, and complained the whole way off the ship, opening his umbrella before they even got off the ship. Their mother met them where the shuttle touched down, touching their cheeks in fond if distant greeting.

“My boys,” she said. She wasn’t holding her own umbrella, there was a maid behind her holding it for her as well as one for herself. It was drizzling, but neither Aberforth nor Brendol really desired getting wet. Space might be cold, but at least it was dry. “Lightbridge is ready for us, we’re going to host the wake there.”

“Lightbridge, mother?” asked Aberforth.

“The old estate. I do forget how young you were when we fled.”

The trip was long, and Aberforth saw that even if it was entirely and always wet on Arkanis, at least that made it flourish. The grass was a greenish teal color, and the leaves on the trees the same. As they rode further and further from the city, Aberforth began to note people out in fields, wearing large shoes. The planet was apparently waterlogged enough that there was danger of sinking into the mud like some places had danger of sinking into snow.

It turned out that both the Academy their father ran and the Hux family estate were in some isolated tiny town called Detherby, or so their mother told them as the countryside slid past. Detherby was a fishing town, and while it had grown and thrived when the Academy was nearby now buildings sat empty and once a day a shuttle made a round trip to the nearest city for supplies or to deliver fish.

It was sad to look at, Aberforth decided, and turned away from the window. Lightbridge was a fine and grand estate, and even Brendol Jr. didn’t look put out about staying there too long. “It’s been kept up by a cousin,” their mother said, stepping out of the transport as her maid opened the door and held up an umbrella. “Wedla Sillye. She’s not staying there, but she will be coming to the funeral and you both should thank her for keeping this place from ruin.”

“Yes mother,” agreed Brendol.

“There’s no staff, but we do have a few things to eat. My maid will cook something for us, but it won’t be up to usual snuff.”

Aberforth wondered, not for the first time, just how close his parents had been at all. His father was freshly dead and his mother was barely affected. But, he decided as he followed her and his brother into the home he barely remembered, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt, just believe she was compartmentalizing.

The entryway was two levels, he noticed first, a low square before it raised up into the entry proper. How odd, he thought, stepping up with his brother and mother. The maid was already retreating to some other room, slipping silently away.

“’Forth, are you going to come to your room?” asked Brendol, and Aberforth turned to see his mother and brother already halfway up the stairs.

“No, I want to look around a bit, if that’s alright,” he said. “I was so young when we left, I don’t remember this place nearly at all.”

“Of course, feel free,” said his mother, before beckoning Brendol upstairs with her, leaving Aberforth alone in the entryway. His footsteps echoed as he walked further inside, exploring this relic of a life he left when he was still so young. He had a few hazy memories, but mostly just impressions of things.

Running his fingers over the walls, Aberforth found himself struck that they weren’t metal, and shook his head with a laugh. He had been on starships too long. He was proud of his rank of colonel, but it did mean he didn’t get to spend much time on planets. And it was unfortunate that it had to be the death of his father that brought him back. The rooms were filled with furniture draped in white cloth, and when he pulled one away he found a desk he remembered playing under as a small child while his father worked.

Tracing the edges of it, Aberforth smiled sadly to himself. His childhood had been disrupted something awful, what with fleeing to the uncharted edges of the galaxy, but it hadn’t been bad at all. Tapping a finger on the desk in farewell, he turned and made his way upstairs, hearing his family talking and following their voices.

“Will your fiancé not be coming?” his mother was asking, watching Brendol unpack, shaking out his dress uniform as General for the funeral.

“Mother, we are not engaged,” said Brendol. “The Supreme Leader has given us _permission,_ but that doesn’t mean we’re set to marry.”

“Well the announcement sounded quite a bit like one of an engagement.”

“Is Kylo coming?” asked Aberforth, sitting on the free chair beside his mother. “You never mentioned one way or another.”

“Yes, he’s coming after the funeral. He doesn’t want to intrude, he said,” Brendol sighed to explain. Aberforth nodded slowly. Sometimes, he got the feeling that Kylo didn’t actually _like_ Brendol that much. But who would argue when the Supreme Leader said you had to do something?

“He knows to come to Detherby doesn’t he?” asked their mother, drawing Aberforth from his thoughts.

“Yes mother, he does.” She nodded, satisfied.

Soon enough the brothers were settled in their rooms, their mother’s maid taking their dress uniforms to press them. She had also made dinner, fillets of orange fish and limp black vegetables served with a pale pink drink. It didn’t look appetizing, really, but neither did rations and they survived on those. The drink was a mellow juice of a sort, and Aberforth was surprised to find he liked it. The fish was incredibly salty, but their mother informed them that this was Arkanii cuisine and they should be grateful they weren’t eating rations.

The dining room echoed too much. The whole estate did, really, echoed with being empty for so long and echoed with memories as well. “I think I found father’s study today,” Aberforth said, breaking the silence. “I found the desk I remembered playing under when we lived here. It’s odd, being back here after so long.”

“It’s exactly how I remember it,” agreed Brendol. “Nothing’s changed at all.”

Their mother hummed her agreement. “Things are almost too much the same,” she murmured, but fell silent and would say no more.

That night, Aberforth lay in bed and listened to the rain tapping at his window and stared at his uniform all laid out for the next day and just…existed. Just lay in bed and breathed. He was back in his childhood home for the first time in years and nothing was different from how he remembered it. Even down to the wetness and the rain.

It wasn’t entirely, though. His father was gone. Forever. They were laying him to rest the very next day, and all Aberforth could feel was curious emptiness. It wasn’t grief, it was just…a lack of father. Rolling over to sleep, he wondered if that made him a bad son, or if it just meant that his father’s principles survived in him.

The day of the funeral dawned unspectacularly behind a thick layer of clouds, and found Brendol Hux Jr. and Aberforth Hux standing in dress uniform at the edge of the dock beside the barge that held their father’s corpse. Burials on Arkanii coasts were conducted almost exclusively at sea, so they had been told. The ground was too loose to bury anyone in, and the Commandant had said he wanted to be buried at Detherby.

As for why, neither Brendol Jr. nor Aberforth knew.

Their mother, dressed in black lace, sniffed into her kerchief between them, taking the hand of every mourner and thanking them for coming before passing them off to whichever of her sons were free at that moment. It seemed half the galaxy had come, crowding onto the dock, or climbing somberly onto the funeral barge, which would take their father’s corpse out to sea and deposit him there. His funeral clothes were sewed with weights, Aberforth remembered being told. The body would be deposited and it would sink.

Aberforth didn’t know how no one else found that prospect chilling. He hadn’t ever lived nor been stationed anywhere near the ocean, and as a result the vast unbroken stretch of water was unnerving.

Speaking to some Major General who Aberforth remembered from his childhood in flight on the _Aggressor,_ he happened to glance up and saw at the end of the dock a mother and son. His own mother was staring at them icily, and the Major General turned to see them as well.

“Oh yes, that will be Rhodelind and Armitage,” he said, tone cooling but not frozen.

“Who are they?” asked Aberforth. Rhodelind looked to be the same age as his mother, her blonde hair tied back in a braid. She wore a dress of tealish green, just like the flora of the planet and her arm was around her son’s shoulders. He was skinny and lithe with a shock of red hair atop his head and looked to be roughly his own age even if he wore simple clothes while Aberforth himself wore a fine dress uniform.

“Best ask your mother.” With a parting salute, he moved on, and before someone else could engage him, Aberforth leaned over to his mother and murmured his question. Brendol Jr. also seemed to be watching their approach.

“That _woman_ and her son have no business here,” she answered him, her hand clenched and trembling around her kerchief.

“But who _are_ they?” insisted Aberforth, but got no response as they were standing before them now.

“Maratelle,” said Rhodelind calmly, extending her hand. “My heart breaks with yours.”

“Leave, you are not welcome here,” said his mother, her eyes watering again but not losing a wisp of anger.

“My son and I have full right to be here.” The son in question was watching them all with the same pale eyes his mother had, taking in Aberforth and Brendol Jr’s fine uniforms and dark hair and their mother in all her splendor as a mourning widow.

“You have no right.”

“Maratelle, you are not of this corner of Arkanis. Anyone here will tell you I have right. Beyond that, my son and I have kept up your home and we have right to be thanked for our efforts.”

“I was under the impression that a cousin of ours was doing so,” said Brendol Jr. “A Wedla Sillye.”

“Mrs. Sillye lives four hundred miles away from Detherby,” said Armitage, speaking for the first time. His accent was exactly how their father had spoken, Aberforth noted. Perhaps that gentle rolling brogue was native here. “She came once every two months. Mother and I were up there far more often. She knew that we had most right to it after her, so she let us take charge of the house.”

“Cultural quirks are not property rights,” insisted Maratelle, Aberforth blinking as he tried to sort this out. Brendol Jr. seemed to be trying the same.

“But cultural _values_ say that my son and I will stand across from you to watch Brendol’s body be given back to the ocean,” said Rhodelind. Turning to her son, she took his hand and said, “Come Armitage, we are going to bid our farewell.”

“Yes mother,” he agreed, following her onto the barge as Maratelle shook in rage and sadness behind them.

“Mother, who are they, exactly?” asked Brendol Jr.

“Rhodelind was your father’s mistress,” spat Maratelle. “He fathered that boy and left them behind when we fled. Finally saw reason.”

Aberforth’s head swiveled, watching them climb onto the barge easily, apparently unbothered by the staring eyes of every other guest. “So Armitage is our half-brother?” he asked.

“Genetically, yes. But Rhodelind is a greedy woman. She chased your father and seduced him and when she had a child she assumed too much. She thought that boy and you two were of equal standing because you shared a father. Brendol wouldn’t listen to me, but I always knew she was trying to profit off our name.”

“Maratelle,” greeted some mourner, coming to her and taking her hand. “I am so sorry that you had to speak to Rhodelind again. She shouldn’t have come.”

And just like that, they were dragged into greeting mourners again. There were a few they knew, but more that they didn’t, and eventually came none other than Wedla Sillye came with her husband and daughter. “Mrs. Hux, I am so sorry for your loss,” she greeted.

“I thank you, Mrs. Sillye. But do you know who came earlier?”

“Who?”

“Rhodelind and Armitage Halloran. Who claimed to have been looking after the house in your name.”

“Did they come? Oh no, they shouldn’t have.”

“I’m concerned about them having been in our home.”

“They live on the shore, it was easier for them to come keep it up. I have a life in Talbot, I couldn’t drop everything for so long and culturally they did have right. Armitage is still Brendol’s son, he had more right than anyone else I could have hired.”

“I hope you took the good china out.”

“Maratelle, Rhodelind is not a thief.”

But she wouldn’t hear it. That was a truth of his parents, Aberforth knew. They didn’t hear what they didn’t want to. And mother certainly wouldn’t want to hear that Rhodelind and her son were anything but how she saw them.

Still, when they finally climbed onto the barge, Rhodelind and Armitage stood firmly by where Commandant Brendol Hux lay on a trap door, ready to be deposited. They would not be moved, Rhodelind’s feet panted strongly and Armitage the same beside her. Armitage did seem to be sizing them up, staring at them as though seeking something.

The barge took off into the water, and ploughed the water as it made its way off the shore, where there would be no danger of Brendol Sr. washing ashore. If it weren’t for military training, Aberforth would have shuddered at the thought. Brendol Jr. looked to be in a staring contest with Armitage, refusing to blink or look away. Brendol Jr. was too prideful at least half of the time, and that he got entirely from mother.

She was looking quite put out about the whole situation, fluctuating between upset at Rhodelind and upset at seeing her husband’s body soon to be “given back to the ocean” as Rhodelind had said. _Rhodelind_ didn’t seem bothered by the angry looks Maratelle kept giving her, she just stood there, staring at the body and letting tears slide out of her eyes, accompanied by occasional breathy sobs. Armitage just stared at his father’s body with the same regard he gave to Brendol Jr. and Aberforth. It was curiosity more than anything, and it made Aberforth want to talk to him and ask _did you know anything at all about your father before today?_

There was no chance to do so, and eventually they reached where he would be deposited, or so it seemed for the anchor was dropped. Attention went to Maratelle, who took a breath and began her eulogy. It was fond and punctuated by sadness, and very short. But no one would blame her, upset as she was.

And then before Brendol Jr. could speak, Rhodelind did. It caused a noticeable ripple through the crowd, but she would not back down, not even when there were murmurs from all others attending.

“Brendol made promises to me of support and love,” she said. “And he fulfilled those, but not beyond his departure. I left my trade for him, but when he left me with a son in turn. And when he left us, we returned to the sea. I thought I would hate him, if I ever saw him again, leaving us without even a farewell _knowing_ that people knew who Armitage’s father was, _knowing_ that if the wrong ears heard it we would be at risk. But here he is, and all I can feel is glad that just as we returned to the water, now he gets to as well. Water is the mother of all life and all civilization, but it is also the place of great death. We live and thrive on what the fishermen and the sea women can bring to shore, but in the same moment those things we catch perish. My son and I feed Detherby by great death, we dive into the sea just to kill, so that others may live. And because of that, we know the death water brings just as well as we know its life. They say the sea women are those who can whisper to death itself, by diving deeper and longer than most humans can hold their breath. If that is true, then I shall tell death to treat him well.”

Armitage didn’t speak when Brendol Jr. and Aberforth finished their own eulogies, just watched. And when Brendol was about to be returned to the ocean, while Maratelle wept into her kerchief, he let Rhodelind clutch as his hand, shaking under emotion as the door slid open beneath the body.

Arkanii waters were dark, in principle, a swelling grey that spoke of the eternal drizzling the planet had to offer. Arkanis meant, Aberforth had heard his father tell him one night in exile when he complained of having no memory of home, Sky Colored Water. Rhodelind spoke of the ocean as a place of great life, and great death. Most Arkanii children were born in water births, he remembered, tying them forever to that which flowed through their lives and to that which they would eventually return. Brendol Jr. hadn’t been, Maratelle wasn’t a child of Arkanis and she didn’t fancy any sort of birth that didn’t include the birthing bricks her own mother had knelt on. But Aberforth _had,_ and he wondered if it was a genetic memory passed down through his father that filled him with such peace to see his father’s corpse start to drift gently down into the deep, a startled school of flashing silver fish parting around his body in a corona.

When he was out of sight, the doors slid shut again and the anchor was raised. It all felt somewhat dismissive, but it seemed Arkanii people were brisk, given what Aberforth had seen in how Rhodelind and Armitage didn’t acknowledge how much they were avoided. Only Wendla Sillye spoke to them as the barge returned to shore, speaking in low tones so none could hear. Aberforth rather suspected that she was warning them not to come to Lightbridge for the wake. Indeed, the only reason they had been tolerated at the funeral was because it wasn’t sporting for a widow to push her late husband’s mistress and bastard into the water to swim to shore.

True enough, they weren’t at the wake, a solemn affair where more hands were shook and toasts were raised to Brendol’s memory. Aberforth accepted both, sipping at the drinks and passing his mother more kerchiefs. She had seemed just fine yesterday, but to be fair yesterday she wasn’t watching her husband’s corpse be deposited into the ocean.

Brendol Jr., as the older son, was deflecting questions of what he meant to do with Lightbridge, and edging around the subject of inheritance, as well as the many questions of his fiancé. At least Aberforth was spared all that, younger sons only got condolences, not questions.

When he told his brother that, hiding in the doorjam to the kitchen, Brendol huffed a laugh and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say everyone thought the funeral was days ago. It’s barely been two hours.”

“Well it wasn’t their father, was it? Mother called us about it a few days ago, they probably think you’ve had time to think about all this.”

“We’ve had three days’ notice before the funeral, ‘Forth. Three days is not enough time to plan all that.”

“Well, you’re the General tactical genius, aren’t you?”

“Troops and family are very different, you should know that too, Colonel.”

“I’m not in charge of nearly half of who you are.”

“Few are.” Brendol Jr. looked incredibly tired, dressed in his fine uniform but leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. “I miss father already.”

“Me too.”

“I thought I was totally independent, that because of who I am and my rank and who I’m going to marry and all, I thought I didn’t need father. Now he’s gone. And now I’m realizing how much I depended on just…just knowing he was out there.”

Aberforth put his hand bracingly against Brendol’s arm, gripping it in solidarity. Watching his brother take a long steadying breath he said, “I’m going back, but I can make your excuses for you, if you want. Give you some time.”

“Thank you ‘Forth, but I’ll be alright. We can’t leave mother, in any case.”

A wake probably shouldn’t be something to white knuckle one’s way through, Aberforth thought when the last were gone. But that had been the only way to describe the experience. Sitting by an actual fireplace while a gently rumbling storm hummed its way around Lightbridge’s walls, all he could think of was the relief that he wouldn’t have to raise any more toasts to his father and his legacy.

Brendol Jr. was eating with one hand and typing furiously at a datapad with the other, never truly free of work, and while Aberforth had his own, he did not envy his brother’s rank. Their mother lay on a settee that had released a rather alarming amount of dust when first beaten clean, cool damp cloth over her eyes to keep the swelling down. “You two must think me a mess,” she said finally.

“Of course not, mother,” assured Brendol Jr. “I think you laid your husband to rest today and had to drop him into an ocean at that.”

“Well neither of you seem bothered, and I feel like a fool.”

“Father always taught us not to be attached to the person, but to the ideals,” said Aberforth.

“Yes, he did, didn’t he? I should have learned that lesson too, I cried in front of Rhodelind!” it was then that Aberforth and Brendol Jr. both looked to each other before the elder said cautiously,

“You never did mention Rhodelind before, and never Armitage either.”

“Both of you were so young before we fled, how could I explain it to you? And then we left them behind when we left Arkanis, if it weren’t for your father wanting to be laid to rest in Detherby you would never have to know about them. I’ve told you, Rhodelind was a greedy woman.”

“She didn’t seem that way, in the eulogy she gave.”

“One she had no right to give!” Maratelle sat upright then, tears in her eyes again as she clutched the cloth. “Funerals are not for mistresses! They may come to memorial services, or visit the grave, and sometimes to the wake, but not for the funeral! They are not allowed to speak!” Aberforth moved to her side, letting her drop her face against his shoulder, a hand stroking the dark hair so much like his own. “I had to share your father’s heart with that woman for so long, I thought I’d never have to share anything with her again after we left. And then my husband wanted to be laid to rest where she could come and bring her bastard in front of everyone. The last time I ever saw his face, I had to share with her again.”

Over her head, the brothers exchanged looks, uncertain what to do. Their mother had never been the crying type, but she hadn’t had to look her husband’s mistress in the eye in years either, let alone over the corpse of her husband.

The next day, as it had the last two, it rained. Aberforth couldn’t help but wonder why anyone bothered to stay on this planet if it never stopped raining. Or worse, what if no one noticed the rain and no one noticed that they always got wet if it never stopped?

“At least space is dry,” he muttered, watching as it just kept raining, knocking against his window as if politely asking permission to enter.

Kylo was to arrive that day, ostensibly to console his betrothed. Likely they would sit and have civil, stilted conversations and Aberforth would have to wonder why they even bothered. Clearly neither of them were actually happy with the arrangement, surely this wasn’t what the Supreme Leader had wanted.

His mother had recovered, at least, no longer weeping or upset over Rhodelind, at least that they could see. Still, she cut an impressive figure, dressed in her widow’s weeds. “Your father wanted to be buried according to his culture, but I will mourn according to mine,” she said that day as they waited to hear the whine of a transport bringing Kylo to Lightbridge’s door. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to stay with your aunt and uncle for mourning. You two are both still on grievance leave?”

“Yes, mother. For the next two weeks,” said Brendol Jr, cutting his breakfast into precise squares before eating them one by one. “Barring any emergency.”

“I can’t imagine one would crop up, not with how well you run things,” said Aberforth, drawing bit of a proud smirk from his brother.

“I’ll be staying with our relations for a month or so. Brendol told me from the start of his illness that he didn’t want me going into full mourning for him,” their mother continued. “When you leave Lightbridge, be sure to close it up properly, and make certain that it is your cousin, not the Hallorans who gets the keys.” A look between the brothers confirmed it; neither one wanted to be the one to point out that the Hallorans had been the ones who had kept it up so far.

It was just after breakfast that Kylo finally arrived, stepping out from the transport into the rain, not carrying any bags and not bothered by the constant assault of water. Then again, he was without a single visible scrap of skin, so that might have something to do with it. They met him just inside the house, stepping up from that odd recessed area into the entryway proper. As always, Kylo removed his helmet to greet the family he would wed, bowing over Maratelle’s hand, shaking Aberforth’s, and finally pressing the most awkward of kisses to Brendol Jr’s cheek.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he said evenly. He always did make a point to seem a suitable match in front of their parents. Honestly, he could have been an entirely different species but if he was favored by Snoke, Aberforth’s parents would have happily cuffed Kylo and Brendol Jr together and told them to make it work without one of them dying at the hands of the other. At least Kylo was human.

“Thank you for your compassion,” said Maratelle in return.

“The room’s this way,” said Brendol Jr, inclining his head for Kylo to follow him upstairs.

As they left, Maratelle turned to her son and said, “Aberforth, I’m going to Talbot, I’m having lunch with Mrs. Sillye. You need to make your brother’s fiancé welcome today, but before you leave, do meet with her. She is your family by blood, and there isn’t much of that left on your father’s side.”

“I didn’t know we had any Arkanii relatives left,” he said.

“Very few. Your father always did want to return here, but the Order didn’t allow for it. It’s why he wanted to be put to rest here. I’m sure he would want you to treasure this planet as much as he did, and I know your brother surely won’t.”

“It _is_ too muddy for him.”

“I’ll ask Mrs. Sillye when she’s free for you all to meet. Dinner, or the like.”

“Thank you, Mother. May I ask, why aren’t you staying to welcome Kylo?”

“There is exactly one good thing about being a widow entering mourning, my son. And that is that you can ignore all social conventions.” And with a parting smile, Maratelle took an umbrella and stepped out into the ever constant rain, going to the transport to be taken to Talbot.

With his mother gone and his brother off with his fiancé, there wasn’t much for Aberforth to do. He found himself in the sitting room the wake had been held in, and found himself wondering after the lighter patches of wall around the room, running his fingers along the borders to see if he could detect anything behind the wallpaper. There didn’t seem to be anything, and he didn’t know much about how buildings that weren’t made entirely of steel and iron stood. Lightbridge was anything but a starship, old and creaking and shifting under the water that licked at it day in and day out.

Aberforth was startled from his thoughts by the sudden rushing footsteps that had to be Kylo’s for the way that they still managed to stomp. Brendol Jr was following behind him, and Aberforth couldn’t help but wonder why they were tearing down the stairs.

“What’s happening?” he asked, watching Kylo jump the last step.

“Someone is at your door, and it isn’t your mother,” answered the Knight. True to his words, immediately after he spoke, there was a chime from the bell, a dusty whine of noise from something that probably hadn’t been rung in over twenty years. It was Kylo who wrenched open the door, ready to defend the Hux brothers and their home. But all who waited on the other side of the door was Armitage Halloran, holding a bag of some sort, looking very confused at who it was before him. “Who are you?” demanded Kylo, looking the man up and down.

“Armitage Halloran, I’m their half-brother, we share a father,” he said.

“He’s father’s bastard,” explained Brendol Jr. On any man they dealt with daily in the Order, to say it so openly would be viable grounds for a duel, or would make anyone ruffle up and defend their honor. Armitage, however, didn’t seem at all bothered by it, instead holding up the bag.

“I brought you some Whitehead.”

“What is Whitehead?”

“It’s a type of fish. They’re migratory, and they’ve just started coming up. I don’t know much about father, but mother told me that he liked to eat Whitehead on toast. I thought you’d might like to have some, considering.”

“That’s rather kind of you Armitage, thank you,” said Aberforth when it was clear neither his brother nor his future brother-in-law were going to respond nor take the fish. “This is Kylo Ren, by the way. He and my brother are engaged.”

Arkanis was only barely in the control of the Order, but they still knew exactly who controlled their planet. Armitage was no exception, it seemed, his eyes going wide as he looked Kylo up and down a fleeting moment before saying, “I thought you must be a cousin or something.”

“Clearly he isn’t,” said Brendol Jr shortly.

“ _Now_ I know that. Well, congratulations, I suppose. I just came to give you the fish, I have to get back to the docks. It was an honor meeting you…Ren?” Kylo nodded shortly, accepting the cautious address. Just as he stepped off the veranda into the rain, which he was apparently unbothered by, he turned around again and said, “Oh, by the way, your Sywy fruit tree is going to be ready for harvest soon. If you want to ferment it into wine, let me know.”

Without another word, he turned and headed down the walk, leaving the Hux brothers and Kylo standing and watching the rain fall behind him. “He wanted to talk to you,” said Kylo. “He heard your mother wasn’t going to be in today and wanted to talk to you about your father. Seeing me messed up that plan.”

“I thought going into someone’s head hurt them,” said Brendol Jr.

“I can be subtle when the need calls for it.”

“I understand why he’d want to talk,” said Aberforth. “If the only thing he knows about his father is that he liked a specific type of fish on toast, I can see why he’d want to meet with those who knew him. Incidentally, do either of you know how to prepare a fish?”

“It can’t be that hard,” said Kylo, taking the fish and heading inside. Aberforth and Brendol Jr looked at each other a long moment before heading after him, uncertain if the result would be even close to edible, let alone appetizing.

As it was, Kylo found something on the holonet that explained how to generally filet a fish, and was following it best he could, stuttering when the example fish and the Whitehead were clearly different. Watching him and offering their own ideas, the Hux brothers cast their thoughts to their odd half-brother, who seemed so at ease around them but who apparently developed strategies to try and talk to them.

“He said he needed to get back to the docks,” said Brendol Jr suddenly. “And he brought us fish. Does he work down there?”

“Brendol, Detherby is a fishing village,” said Kylo, examining the Whitehead for where the rectal fin might be. “Chances are your half-brother is a fisherman. Explains why he would have free time in the middle of the day, if he worked this morning.”

“It’s barely past breakfast!”

“To my understanding, fishermen and other manual laborers get up before the sunrise on most planets. 0900 is generally considered the middle of the day for them.”

0900 was the start of the first shift on a military ship. That was the officer’s privilege; that they could start their days so late, while the Stormtroopers were the ones who had to rise in the small hours for their days. It set them apart, gave clear distinctions, and apparently had been drawn from those who had to work with their hands. Provenance proven. And their half-brother, a man who shared their _blood_ was working the same hours as a _Stormtrooper._

“He mentioned some sort of fruit tree,” said Aberforth. “I didn’t know we had one.”

“We used to hire people to harvest it for us, mother and father had a store of the wine somewhere,” said Brendol Jr. “I wonder if it’s still around or if mother’s right and the Hallorans really are thieves.”

“All the good china is still in the house, and so is all the silver, I don’t think they’d go for wine when a spoon would be easier to take.”

“All the portraits are gone.”

“Portraits?” asked Aberforth, watching as Kylo clumsily gutted the fish in front of him. He was glad, for the fish’s sake, that it was already dead, watching him try and take the innards out. “Kylo, maybe you should cut off the head first.”

A pointed chop was the only answer from the Knight as Brendol Jr. said, “You probably were too little to remember, ‘Forth, but we used to have portraits of our ancestors all over the house. There was one of Father too. There aren’t many of us left, but the Hux family is very old.”

“I don’t think your half-brother and his mother abducted generations of portraits of a family they aren’t even part of,” said Kylo. “Has your mother accused them of it?”

“No, she’s not mentioned it. Maybe she knows where they’ve gone.”

“Is that where the light patches on the walls come from?” asked Aberforth, feeling silly for not knowing. Still, if anyone was safe to ask, it was his brother.

“I expect so. Kylo, I think you’ve managed to kill the fish a second time over. Just wait until mother gets home, her maid can prepare it.”

“And when your mother’s gone home in mourning?” asked Kylo. “The only thing you know how to prepare is rations.”

“And they’ve served us perfectly well!”

Sensing some sort of spat approaching, Aberforth interceded best he could, saying, “I’m sure we can find someone in town who would be willing to cook us a few meals now and then. Armitage might even be willing. If he _is_ a fisherman, then surely he knows how to cook a fish.”

“If you want to try and find him to ask him to cook for us, feel free.”

“I’m just saying he could teach us, then we wouldn’t need to depend on him. Once mother’s gone, I mean.”

The suggestion went without answer, even by the time Maratelle returned from her trip to Talbot in the early evening, her maid immediately going to the kitchen to prepare dinner. As the younger brother in the ancestral home, Aberforth could not seek out Armitage without Brendol Jr’s express permission, given that he was now master of the home. Kylo seemed content to just sit back and watch to see what his fiancé would do, an eye on him even as Maratelle said over dinner, “I do worry about you three being here alone. None of you know how to cook.”

“Aberforth suggested finding someone in Detherby who would be willing to cook for us, or at least give us a few recipes,” said Brendol Jr.

“Hiring a temporary cook might be a good idea. But if anyone in Detherby is to continue to view the Hux family with respect, you shouldn’t be taking lessons from anyone. I would leave Tella with you, but she’s accompanying me to Heeth to my own family.”

“Mother, you should know,” said Aberforth cautiously. “Armitage Halloran was here today. He gave us Whitehead fish because father used to enjoy it, or so Rhodelind had told him, and offered his help in harvesting and fermenting the Sywy fruit.”

Maratelle went still at that a long moment and finally said, “I hope they didn’t presume to _keep_ our Sywy wine. If you engage your half-brother as your temporary cook, that is fine, so long as you make clear that he is only a poor relation you are giving work to, not a family member. And be wary about him, you never know what his mother might be encouraging him to do.”

“He’s still our blood.”

“Aberforth, I may not be a child of this corner of Arkanis, I may not even be a child of this _planet,_ but I lived here for a majority of my adult life. Bastards may be viewed as full children of their parents, they may not even be viewed as bastards traditionally are in the rest of the galaxy, but they are _not_ part of the family. Armitage may not face social expulsion as he would elsewhere, but he cannot join the family. And if he thinks to take advantage of you by the fact that you don’t know that, then I will teach you.”

Aberforth learned a lot about the cultural traditions of the corner of Arkanis his family was native to that evening. Bastards were allowed to serve their parent’s family at the highest level, sons as butlers and daughters as ladies’ companions or housekeepers, but they could not inherit anything but funds. No land could go to a bastard, but the worth of that land could. If a wealthy man had no heir, he could give all his funds to his bastard, and that child could buy the home and title and position himself heir.

Armitage hadn’t had that, he apparently had gone straight to the ocean like his mother. For all that Maratelle insisted of Rhodelind’s greed and saying she wouldn’t be surprised if they had _lived_ in Lightbridge without Mrs. Sillye to keep an eye on them, Aberforth got the feeling that wasn’t the case at all. Intuition had no place in his line of work, but it was about the only requirement for Kylo’s, so perhaps there was some worth and use to it.

The rain seemed to pick up and turn into an actual rainstorm when Aberforth went to bed that night, given permission to seek out his half-brother the next day, to ask if he or anyone he knew might be willing to make a few meals at Lightbridge. Brendol Jr very vocally didn’t want to go to Detherby if he could avoid it, and Kylo apparently decided that now was the time to actually start trying to get along with his fiancé.

Maratelle had sighed that their droids were all gone, because apparently they had had a specially made Sywy harvesting droid that handled the winemaking every year. If there was to be any Sywy wine, it would have to be harvested by either a rented droid or by living hands. Aberforth knew better than to ask why she was so invested in the wine when they hadn’t had any since they fled so many years ago.

Standing at the window and watching the light from his window cut through the dark night, Aberforth watched the rain fall heavier and heavier until what he had thought to be a constant drizzle was proven to be simply atmospheric. Distantly, he could see a few lights from Detherby, and he wondered what they must think, looking up at the house that had stood empty for so long suddenly with lights on.

On the ships, the children who had been pulled along into exile by their parents had told each other spook stories, mostly the older ones wanting to scare the younger ones into leaving them alone. A lot of them had to do with ghosts of spaced corpses that clung onto passing ships and snuck into the wiring, but the oldest kids in Aberforth’s earliest memories told spook stories from planets. They didn’t connect with the younger ones who couldn’t remember enough to be scared by footprints in the mud that walked up to a window and disappeared, but there was one that had clung like one of those spaced ghosts.

_“Up on the hill was a big, empty house. No one lived there, hadn’t for years. People said only ghosts lived there now. But one night, there was a light on in the attic, and a figure of someone on the inside looking out.”_

Big looming things in the dark weren’t frightening to Aberforth, never had been, to look out a viewport and see the shadow of another ship lumbering in the dark between stars only meant that the fleet was together, huddled against the cold of space. But he always knew he had an unconventional childhood. 

The next day just after breakfast, having kissed his mother’s cheek in farewell, Aberforth took his umbrella and walked down to Detherby. It was something of a distance, but to walk from one end of a Star Destroyer to the other took longer, and here there was actual smell to the air. It smelled dark and rich and fertile, and even if Arkanis was endlessly wet, at least it made up for it elsewhere.

Detherby was a small town, but its roads were paved at least. The outer edges were filled with empty buildings, but slowly signs of life began to appear as he walked, the things that were needed to make a town run. A green grocers, a school, a public house, a market, and so on. It looked like a backwater country town that only barely deserved a ranking above village, but Aberforth’s father had asked very specifically to be laid to rest here, and that meant there was some sort of good memory tucked somewhere between these buildings.

The ocean came very suddenly, the town as a whole huddled against the beach. And where the town seemed empty, the oceanfront was nigh bustling. The funeral barge hadn’t sailed from these docks, these were working docks with plenty boats and workers bustling around them. Women with sopping wet hair carrying buckets full of sea plants and what looked like rough rocks of all things were bartering loudly with the men coming off the boats, exchanging fish for plants and so on. Among the women was none other than Rhodelind Halloran, her bucket just as full as the others but not bartering as the others were, instead acting as mediator or just watching.

He’d not find Armitage just watching, Aberforth rationalized, even as he felt severely out of place being the only one holding an umbrella against the slightly heavier rain. The dockmaster was busy at work with his records, but looked up when Aberforth entered his office, knocking politely as he did. “Excuse me sir,” he started, but was cut off by the old man.

“You’re one of the Commandant’s boys, aren’t you? No one who lives on these docks knocks, or calls me sir,” he said. “Are you here to charter a boat to take you to the resting place? Not sure who’s free, but you can wait here while I harass someone.”

“No, no, that’s not why I’m here. I came here to find my half-brother.”

“Halloran? Oh, the _Ancrene Wisse_ hasn’t come back from work this morning, but they’ll be along soon. A captain can run his ship tight as he can, but when the sailors get hungry for lunch, he knows to bring them back to shore.”

“Where does the ship dock?”

“Wherever there’s space. EssEss usually directs them, you’ll have to check in with them.”

“EssEss?”

“We’ve got two droids who work on the docks. Salt water corrodes everything, you know, so we’re down to the last of them. All salvaged from your father’s old Academy. SS-08 and R2-F9. R2 helps patch up boats sometimes, usually helps with engines, and EssEss always used to direct landing when cadets practiced flying, so they’re at home with directing ships too.”

Aberforth nodded slowly, mind reeling that Detherby had simply salvaged the Academy’s droids and were now coming up to the last of them. They had no droids at all?

“If you want,” the old man was saying, “you’re free to wait here. EssEss works in the other room, we keep them out of the way of the water best we can, so you can wait there if you want. I might have some brack tea somewhere.”

“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” said Aberforth, letting himself be waved into the other room as a sailor ducked his head in and called,

“Langley and Culwich are fighting. EssEss must have sparked, they’ve both been directed to the same spot.”

“You’re in luck, Mr. Hux, _Ancrene Wisse_ is coming in to dock just now, if we can get the helmsmen to stop screaming at each other.” Aberforth followed them to the door but not outside, watching as the old dockmaster took a spotlight and began to flicker it, visual codes of a sort. The ships were still so far out at sea that it didn’t seem like this was as pressing an issue as their tones made it seem. But then again, the ocean was very different from the void, and Aberforth had to sit back and accept that.

The two ships were soon tied to the dock with minimal screaming, and Aberforth watched as the cargo was taken off the ship. Endless amounts of fish, some still valiantly trying to get back into the water, little good it did them. Detherby couldn’t possibly be eating all of them, he realized. This industry had to be exporting them somewhere. To Talbot, maybe? He’d ask Armitage.

And speaking of, there he was among the sailors unloading the catch. Aberforth wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing, but he was clearly working, and it was unprofessional to interrupt someone in the middle of a task unless it was well and truly pressing.

In Aberforth’s world, there was something of a tendency to look down on those who did a task a droid could do just as well. Manual labor was first and foremost in that. But these fishermen, and women, he could see more than a few among the crews, were unbothered by their work, didn’t seem angry to be asked to do such menial labor. In fact, there did seem something to be said about a life of such work, nearly all of them were walls of muscle, packed on to lift armfuls of dead fish into waiting crates rather than to look nice the way some of the vainer officers in the Order took care of their exercise. It was refreshing to see, really.

It did make Armitage, tall and lithe and stringy, stand out all the more. He looked like he was meant for some sort of life that didn’t require such work. He looked like he would snap in half under the weight of the crates, even as Aberforth watched his half-brother haul tens of fish with just as much speed as those around him.

Finally, Armitage stood back, directing the last of the flow of fish while someone passed him a datapad for him to review something on. It was old, that much was clear, with a murky display that stuttered slightly, likely from the rain pouring down on it. This seemed less dangerous to interrupt, and so Aberforth opened his umbrella, feeling horribly out of place again, and went forward to speak to his half-brother.

The man he was with noticed him first, elbowing Armitage into looking up from the pad. “You’ve got a fancy visitor, Captain,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. Halloran,” said Aberforth. “I was hoping to speak with you.”

“It’s _Captain_ Halloran,” said Armitage. “And now’s a bad time, we have to deal with the catch still.”

“Which you know I can handle,” interrupted the man at Armitage’s elbow. “You’re honestly going to tell me you’d rather deal with the catch than talk to your own blood?” Armitage looked to him, sighed and said,

“Make sure they all get in cooling, last time we got a complaint that some of them were starting to rot.”

“Yes sir, Captain.”

“Come on, we’ll go talk in the cabin.” Without another word, Armitage turned on his heel and walked back up onto his boat, Aberforth left to follow him and up the stairs into the cabin where a man was shouting into a radio.

“–and I will _personally_ get EssEss to show us the order log, I know for _fact_ they hold the Ancrene Wisse more important than the Passus! It’s the Academy’s genetic coding!” he was shouting.

“Culwich, if you’re going to scream at Langley, do it to his face,” interrupted Armitage loudly. “You can actually check EssEss’ logs.”

“You’ve got business, Captain?”

“Family stuff, as it happens.” Realization dawned in Culwich’s eyes, and he was soon out of the cabin, the rain muffled as the door latched behind him. Only then did Armitage fold his arms and say, “Why did you want to talk to me? The Hux family has made it very clear how they feel about my existence. Unless you want to demand where we’ve taken something.”

“Even mother’s admitted all the good silver is still in the house,” said Aberforth, trying to be friendly even as his military negotiator persona started to slip into place. “It really is just mother, you know. Neither my brother nor I knew you even existed before we came for the funeral, and neither of us have any strong feelings about you.” Armitage said nothing, just kept looking at him with pale eyes that seemed to flicker between icy blue and pale green. There would be great use for a man who could be so intimidating in the Order, if only he weren’t a bastard fisherman, Captain or otherwise. “I came to ask a favor.”

“And what was so desperate you deigned to talk to your bastard brother?”

“Mother has gone to our aunt and uncle to be with her family in mourning, it’s cultural tradition on her side of the family for the widow to leave so the sons can fully inherit the house.”

“Fascinating.”

“Captain, I am going to be entirely honest with you. I am a Colonel in the First Order’s military, and my brother is General. Kylo is outside the rankings of the military, but we all share one thing in common. None of us know how to cook. We survive off rations and nothing but. Mother agreed even that it would be smart for us to have someone come up to Lightbridge and–”

“I have a _job,_ ” interrupted Armitage. “I am Captain of this ship, I can’t go traipsing up to Lightbridge all the time to feed three grown men who can’t be bothered to learn basic survival. I realize you think my job is worthless compared to yours, but it is mine and I am not going to abandon it for half-brothers who didn’t even bother knowing about me until a few days ago. I can ask around, see if anyone’s willing, but I won’t become your cook.”

This wasn’t going well at all. “I meant to ask if you would teach us. My brother might not be all that receptive, but Kylo and I would like to know how to prepare a fish, at least. The rest we can figure out on our own.”

“We may work with our hands here, but we do still have the Holonet you know. I’m sure you could find someone on there explaining recipes.”

“We tried that, with the fish you brought us. Kylo killed the poor thing a second time over.” There, a twitch of a smile on Armitage’s face, a fluttering of muscle. “I came to ask you to teach us, and because I wanted to talk to you. You’re right, neither my brother nor I knew about you before the funeral, but we share blood and so I want to fix that.”

Armitage seemed to have no nervous ticks, nothing that showed he was thinking at all, just stood there staring impassively at him. It was better than half the people Aberforth worked with daily. The only sound was the eternal rain whispering at the cabin’s windows and the crackle of the radio of ships talking to one another and to EssEss. The ship bobbed and rolled gently underfoot, but Armitage looked as if he were standing on stone ground for how little it affected him, moving naturally with it. It was incredibly intimidating, and Aberforth found himself thinking that his half-brother could have thrived in the Order, if he hadn’t been left behind with his mother in this tiny village by the sea.

Finally he spoke, tone strict but nothing like Brendol Jr’s General Voice, the one he used for speeches and orders. “I’ll teach _you_ , but only the basics. I’m not your tutor, and you’re the only one who actually bothered to seek me out. And I’m not doing it at Lightbridge, your mother made her opinion of me and my mother very clear at the funeral.”

“Then where shall I meet you? You have your catch to deal with, as you’ve said. When may we begin?”

“Not today, you can figure out your food for today. Tomorrow after the morning work’s done I’ll meet you in town. I trust you can find town hall, I’ll meet you out there. Now get off my ship.” 

There were soups and such that Tella had left for them, probably under Maratelle’s insistence, easy things that only needed water added and to be heated up. With Arkanis, water was not a problem, and with the Hallorans having maintained their home, the heating wasn’t a problem either. It stuttered upon starting, and took a long while before the stove was actually hot enough, but without anyone having been there in the intermediary years it would have been far worse, and neither the Hux brothers nor Kylo were going to complain.

“Did you manage to get an agreement out of Armitage?” asked Brendol Jr over their soup for lunch.

“Of a sort, yes,” said Aberforth primly. “He won’t be our cook, but he’s agreed to show me the basics tomorrow.”

“He wasn’t going to be your cook anyway,” said Kylo. “I could sense it in him. He may have wanted to hear about his father, but he wasn’t going to work for you.”

“He’s very proud of his job,” agreed Aberforth. “He’s a captain of a fishing boat, and apparently the old Academy droids are being used down there, there’s some old genetic coding to give preference to anyone with a genetic match to father, so they give him preference above every other ship.”

“Must be useful,” muttered Brendol Jr, clearly off in thought. “’Forth, when you say he will show you the basics, does he mean he refuses to talk to Kylo or I?”

“I’m the one who sought him out and negotiated it, I think he’s very firm when he means he’ll only teach me. He’s very insistent that he’s not my tutor, and he did seem offended at how mother treated him. I think he’s spread that to the rest of the family because we didn’t say anything.”

“It wasn’t our _place_ to say anything. We didn’t know he even _existed,_ how were we supposed to speak about something that happened that we didn’t even know about?”

“As you are so fond of reminding me, logic and emotions make bad bedfellows,” said Kylo, standing. “Excuse me, I’m going for a walk.”

Aberforth looked down at his plate, not willing to say anything. His brother hadn’t taken kindly to it the last time he had raised worries about his marriage. The rest of the day would be tense and awkward, both his brother and Kylo ready to snap in anger and it was down to Aberforth to dance around it. “I know you want to say something,” said Brendol Jr, raising a brow at his brother.

“Of course not. What is there to say?” said Aberforth quietly.

“I know you better than that, ‘Forth. You think we’re entering into some doomed marriage all because Leader Snoke encouraged it.”

“I worry about you.”

“’Forth, that’s _my_ job. _I’m_ the older one.”

“Yes, but I’ve seen how you are together. You try, he…doesn’t. Leader Snoke encouraged and arranged the marriage and you’ve taken it in stride, but Kylo…”

“He’ll come around, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

Aberforth wasn’t so sure. And it all seemed more obvious now that they were on the wet rock of Arkanis for the rest of Grievance Leave. In space, with Brendol Jr. on the _Finalizer_ and Aberforth on the _Protector_ , the brothers could only manage spotty contact with each other, nothing like living together again, and perhaps that was what made it seem worse. But that wasn’t a comforting thought.

Eating in silence, eventually Aberforth decided to go see this Sywy tree that there was talk of harvesting, the gardens in general. Taking up his umbrella and stepping down into that lower ledge in front of the door, he stepped outside into the light rain that hadn’t let up since he was on the docks. He had seen a map of the lands that Lightbridge stood on, but if he had learned anything, being _told_ information and _seeing it_ was very different.

The grasses were tall and wild, it seemed the Hallorans had only taken care of the actual building rather than the lands, and the tips of them brushed against his fingers as he walked. The land was generally flat in Detherby as a rule, only starting to angle up to the mountains in the distance. It was in those foothills that the Academy was built, and part of him thought to turn his feet that way, thinking that it couldn’t be further to walk than the length of the _Protector_ , before shaking his head at the idea.

If the grasses were unruly, the gardens were worse. And far more muddy. Distantly, he wondered if the native flora of Arkanis didn’t stabilize the ground, roots holding it together or some such. As it was, there were plants that he knew weren’t native to Arkanis, all tangled up in each other after years of neglect. Harsh thorns scratched at bark of other plants, craggy roots poised like legs about to get up, flowers and leaves turned every way in the species that liked to face the sun. There was no direct sunlight to be had on this planet, and they seemed confused.

And in the center of this tangle stood a mighty tree, short but incredibly wide, heavy with blue fruits in tight bundles. That was the Sywy tree, he realized. It was also the only thing that had a legitimate path to it anymore, probably from years of the Hallorans having it harvested to be turned into wine. Approaching it, he noticed that the ground under it actually seemed _dry._ The leaves acted as an umbrella, sheltering the fruits. Was that normal, or was that something this tree had been trained into?

“It was trained into it,” said Kylo’s voice, making Aberforth jump into readiness to attack. But it was just Kylo, sitting up in one of the limbs of the tree.

“You frightened me,” chastised Aberforth, not quite ready to take the step his brother did and chastise him for reading his mind.

“Hmm. I do that to most people in the galaxy.” Distractedly, he plucked one of the Sywy fruits from its bundle and turned it over in his hands. That simple motion made a fair few others fall to the ground below. “Sywy fruit is very delicate when it matures. It bruises easily and touching the bundles makes plenty fall. With how often it rains, are you surprised that a tree would evolve to have its fruits be taken off by a rainstorm?”

“Then why does this one shelter itself?”

“Because it was trained to. It was needed for a purpose, to bear fruit for the use of its owners to turn to wine, and they couldn’t afford a stray rainstorm destroy that. Very self-serving, isn’t it?”

This had happened once or twice before, Aberforth realized. He had had odd conversations with his brother’s fiancé, ones where he wasn’t sure what to make of, ones where Kylo said things that didn’t seem to make much sense. Ones that were ostensibly about one thing, but had the feeling that they were discussing something entirely different. “Well,” he said slowly, unsure if he was doing what he should “most things are, aren’t they? This tree was taken advantage of by its owners, but the rain has been taken advantage of by the species. All the life on this planet is probably taking advantage of how much water there is.”

“Everything takes from everything,” agreed Kylo, turning the fruit over in his hand. “But eventually there’s something that gets taken from that can’t take anything back. Your father’s bastard takes from the ocean, but what does the ocean take?”

Aberforth could only shrug, feeling helpless. “I’ve barely lived on planets, I left here when I was too young, and the New Academy only got based on a planet after I graduated. There’s lots of things I don’t know about how planets work.”

Kylo said nothing, just stared at the fruit in his hand for a long time before dropping it, letting it fall to the ground. “Did your brother send you after me?”

“No, he’s of the mind that if he just leaves you be, you’ll sort yourself out. I wanted to see the tree and the land. I didn’t know you were out here.”

“I wasn’t about to walk to Detherby.”

“No, but Lightbridge has enough land to wander for days on, if the maps weren’t lying. You could have gone anywhere.” He couldn’t just leave, this conversation felt unfinished, but Kylo didn’t seem too inclined to speak.

“There was a tale of a caver I heard once, as a child,” he finally said, voice almost hidden by the rain on the leaves of the Sywy tree. Aberforth felt suddenly, desperately out of his depth. “A man called Floyd, trying to explore a cave and getting trapped just a few feet from the entrance. I don’t know if he was real or not, some poor bastard from history or some archetype or some mix of the two. Story goes he was trapped there for two weeks, his family crawled down to pass him food and water, but they couldn’t get him out. So they tried to keep him alive as best they could, tried to keep his hope up while they tried to get someone to tunnel in from another direction and get him out. They didn’t finish that other tunnel in time, he died two days before it was finished with all his family around him. They kept him alive for a slower death. They were selfish enough to keep him alive after there was no hope.”

“But there was hope,” argued Aberforth, feeling completely lost as to why Kylo was telling him _any_ of this. “Every day they must have sat next to him and told him how much further the tunnel was coming, how close they were to getting him out. They must have brought him blankets and pillows, things to make him as comfortable as possible. They must have told him how the second he was free they would go live far away from caves and somewhere flat and open so he can always see the sky.”

_“Someday, you’ll get to see an atmosphere from the other side,” said Father, his hand gentle and warm on Aberforth’s shoulder as they stared down at the planet with a poisonous atmosphere, “someday you’ll have a planet. We aren’t in space forever, I promise you that.”_

“Cold comforts,” dismissed Kylo. “One can always tell when death’s jaws are about to close around them. Floyd surely felt it, heard his family tell him it was only two days away from freeing him and knew he wouldn’t make it. Even if they lied to him as he was dying and told him the tunnel was nearly done, he would know he was going to die in that cave.”

“But his family was there. He didn’t die alone.”

“Everyone dies alone. Doesn’t matter if they die in a mass execution or from thirst alone in the middle of the desert. When they die, there’s no additional soul there to go with them.”

“Then his soul left knowing that he was cared for. His soul left and in his last moments he would have seen his family and knew that they had tried all they could to get him out and didn’t leave him. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Tell me truly, Aberforth, would you not find that some sort of spectacle of death? People gathered to watch you go? Is that not what a _funeral_ is? Just sick amusement for those still living?”

“No.” And oh how his voice caught in his throat. “No, I don’t think so at all. To be there while they die is to assure the dying that they will still matter even after they are gone. And a funeral is the last act one can do for them. Their soul may be gone, but it is a gesture in hopes that the soul might see it, to tell them that they respect them enough to do as they asked, to treat what they used to be with reverence.”

Kylo looked down at him then, and something about his shoulders seemed to soften, even if his face didn’t. “Apologies. Your father passed too recently for this conversation, didn’t he?”

The answer was _yes, it’s been far too recent and I’m really only just starting to realize what his death means to me_ , but this was Kylo Ren, who for all that he could be familiar with was still a direct link to the Supreme Leader, and _he_ would be far from lenient if one of his loyal officers was getting teary eyed at a recent passing. “You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll be fine,” said Aberforth instead.

Kylo merely hummed, leaning back against the bark of the tree, effectively ending the conversation. Opening the umbrella again, Aberforth stepped out from the protective shield of leaves into the rain once more. “Aberforth, tell your brother I’m still on the planet, I’ll be back tomorrow, probably. If not then, maybe the day after.”

“What? Where are you going?” he asked, surprised.

Kylo shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Don’t worry, I can handle myself.”

Kylo running around Arkanis alone for one or two days was…not a comforting thought, whether or not he could handle himself. Still, he nodded, and continued on with his walk, walking back through the garden and out to the rest of Lightbridge’s property, his mind twisting over the question of why Kylo kept having those strange conversations with him. Did they mean anything in particular or was that just his personality, to try and confuse those around him? His first instinct was to ask his brother, but that felt like a breach of trust, somehow. Those strange conversations were private, that Aberforth knew down to his bones. And what they talked about, while strange, was not meant for Brendol Jr. to hear.

Shaking his head, he focused instead on the land around him, and focused on not losing his footing in the deep mud that he had suddenly found himself in that tried to suck down his boots. Were they tied any looser, he was afraid he’d walk straight out of them.

This was frankly awful, but it explained those curious wide shoes he had seen from the transport when he first arrived. If the mud was this bad, and honestly there was no reason why it _shouldn’t_ be this bad what with the rain, then people needed some way of staying above it. Finally making it to the edge of the mud, he planted a fist on his hip, the other still holding the umbrella, lifting a foot to inspect his boot. The mud had gone above his ankles in places, gripping fiercely at his feet. With a sigh, he turned around and started back to the house, trying to wipe his feet clean on the grasses as he walked. This was why he liked starships. They kept his feet clean and dry, and he didn’t need to go home and scrub his boots clean like he would have to do now.

By the time he made it back to the house and scrubbed clean his boots and the trail he had left through the house as he walked to the washroom, Brendol Jr. seemed to have realized his fiancé wasn’t going to be returning any time soon. Aberforth’s news didn’t seem to shock him, at least.

“I just hope he doesn’t terrorize the natives,” he said, turning back to his datapad.

“Are you _working?_ ” asked Aberforth.

“Yes, ‘Forth, I am.”

“We’re on grievance leave, you shouldn’t be working.”

“’Forth, do you think that just maybe _this_ is how I deal with my grief?” asked Brendol Jr. softly, not looking at his brother. With a soft noise, Aberforth dropped his hand heavily onto his brother’s shoulder, gripping tightly at it. He said nothing, he knew what it took from his brother to admit to grieving at all. Their father had taught them that it was the ideals of a man that mattered and not the man himself, but it was hard to hold onto that when he was _dead._

Neither of them spoke much the rest of the day, Brendol Jr. throwing himself into his work and Aberforth feeling horribly adrift with nothing to do in regards to the sadness that was starting to fill up like a spring of water pushing up through the ground.

The next morning, he left a note for Brendol Jr. to find and took his umbrella, starting on a brisk walk to Detherby to meet with his half-brother. It was better not to have told his brother, Aberforth had the feeling he’d have to answer the question he was trying to avoid; “what are you expecting to get out of this?”

Town Hall was the largest building in Detherby, squat with sharply sloping gables, not a flat surface on the roof. That was probably due to the rain, Aberforth thought, waiting under its shelter. Even Lightbridge had sharp gables, diverting the water away, but leaving something of a moat under where the water pelted down, over run with plants, just like Town Hall had. But perhaps those had been planted there to hide that moat?

“Excuse me?” came a voice from behind, and Aberforth turned to see a teenage girl there, her hair wet as if she had just come in from the rain. “Do you want to come inside?”

“I’m waiting for someone, my brother,” said Aberforth.

“But it’s windy,” she said. “You can get hypothermia if it’s too windy and you aren’t dressed right. You aren’t dressed right.”

“Yes, but I am not wet, so I will be fine.” He gestured vaguely with the umbrella folded by his side, and the girl just looked more confused.

“Why would you bother carrying an umbrella?”

“So that I don’t get wet?”

“Yeah, but then you only have one hand to do anything, and it isn’t anywhere near the Spring Deluge so it barely even really rains. Are you from Talbot? My brother goes to deliver fish to all the fancy restaurants there, he says they do things weird.”

“I am not from Talbot, no. I was born on this planet, and I left when I was very young. I only came back a few days ago for my father’s funeral.”

Understanding dawned on the girl’s face slowly, but when her eyes were wide and staring at him, all she said was, “Do you want to come inside, Mr. Hux? I’ve just warmed up some milk, if you want.” He must have let something of his surprise through the impassive mask he wore because she went on to say, “I’m really into government, that’s why I work here in the afternoons and when I don’t have school, when I’m older I want to be the Arkanii Representative for the Order. So I know my history. And I know that the Hux family was _super_ important to Detherby and in Talbot too, years ago. So, you know, I just…”

“Are you trying to butter me up?” There were dozens and dozens who tried that in his normal life, all of them trying to appease him to get to his brother. Really, Brendol Jr. ought to appreciate the amount of work Aberforth did to keep cloying ambitious people away from him so he could do his job.

“No,” she said, nose wrinkled. “I don’t do corruption. I just know your family is important on Arkanis. One of your great-grandfathers actually got the trade of the sea women marked as planetary heritage, you know. They can’t be touched by planetary legislation and all rockfish harvesting has to be done by them, it can’t be turned into big business.”

Aberforth raised his brows. He had no idea that the sea women even _existed_ before a few days previous, and now he learned his ancestors treasured them enough to keep their way of life alive? “I think I will come inside.”

“Great,” said the girl. “I’m Raala, by the way. I’m the secretary, sometimes. But it does mean I get full access to the kitchen.”

Following her inside, Aberforth found it to be much similar to Lightbridge, with wood and plaster walls rather than metal as he was so used to. The ceiling was painted, a mural of some gathering on the beach, women and men gathered together. “That’s the mural of when your father announced the Academy,” said Raala helpfully. “People have been arguing for _years_ if we should get rid of it, or if we need to keep it as a reminder. Your father’s that one, the one with red hair by the one wearing blue. Is it actually a likeness?”

His father was standing just off center, gesturing and almost all attention was focused on him. He was young, and it wasn’t quite right, but it did look something like him. “Not entirely,” he told the girl. “But close enough.”

“I figured that was the case. Come on, kitchen’s through here.”

The kitchen was large enough, and she had a pot of off-white liquid steaming slightly. Milk, he supposed, of some native creature. Raala was taking down two mugs and asking if he wanted anything added to it, when they heard footsteps approaching.

“Raala, do you know where the budget is? I can’t figure out your organization for the life of me,” a man’s voice said, and the door opened to reveal a stout older man, looking entirely absorbed in his datapad and only looking up when Raala coughed at him. “Oh. Oh. Hello. Sorry, I’m Ben Linden, Mayor of Detherby. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself at your father’s funeral.”

“You were there?”

“Of course I was. Knowing Raala, she’s already told you, but the Hux family has always been incredibly important on Arkanis, doubly so for Talbot and unprecedentedly for Detherby. The planetary representative of Arkanis was at the funeral, Yolande Possion.” He remembered her, thought Aberforth suddenly. The severe woman who had barely spoken, just stood and watched as if she had been some sort of legal witness.

“I…I know very little about Arkanis, I’m afraid I didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, you were only four years old when you left, I don’t expect you to know who the mayor outside your family’s country estate is.”

“Do you want any milk, Mayor Linden?” asked Raala, breaking the silence that had settled like mist. “I think Niké must have done a grocery run, we’ve got that crushed loan root you like in yours. I’ve got enough for three.”

“Yes, Raala, thank you.” The girl smiled and poured out the milk and added some crushed spice to one of them and a dense cube of something to another, passing Aberforth the plain one.

As a rule, Aberforth did not enjoy drinking milk. To some extent it was necessary, for calcium and all, but he tended to grit his teeth through it. This milk, of whatever animal that produced it, was not bland like the stuff he hated. It was strange seeing it white, but it was warm and tasted unlike the blue milk he was so used to, mustier in a roundabout pleasant way. “What animal made this?” he asked suddenly.

“It’s Bos milk,” said Raala, almost uncertainly, as if he were being particularly slow.

“Bos are a breed of bovines native to Arkanis,” explained Mayor Linden. “Raala, you know spacers don’t have the same basic things.” She looked actually a bit shame faced at that. “Anyway, Mr. Hux, may I ask why you are sharing milk with the part time secretary?”

“I’ve arranged to meet my half-brother here, she was simply kind enough to invite me inside,” said Aberforth.

“She is precocious. If you want, you’re more than welcome to wait in my office until Captain Halloran arrives.”

“You know my half brother?”

“Of course I do. Captain Halloran organized all the fishermen into a strike last year, denied all catch to Talbot until they started paying fairly.”

“It was amazing,” said Raala. “I wasn’t working the desk that day, but I was helping out around here when the governor himself came to negotiate. Governor Carnet! Here in Detherby! I don’t think he knew we _existed_ before Captain Halloran stopped Talbot from getting fish.”

“Alright Raala, you might not have been working then, but you are now. If you could get the budget for this month onto my desk that would be greatly appreciated.”

“Right. Sorry, Mayor Linden.” She slipped out at that, taking her hot milk with her. Aberforth sipped at his in mild curiosity. Maybe he had been in the military too long, but he couldn’t imagine any of the loose interactions Mayor Linden and Raala had happening anywhere on the _Protector._

“She mentioned wanting to go into politics,” said Aberforth mildly. “She won’t last outside of Detherby.”

“Raala is more competent than you might think, Mr. Hux,” said Mayor Linden. “But I know what you mean, and I have been trying to help her. Do you want to wait in my office?”

Aberforth’s mind raced through what it would mean to accept and what it meant to refuse. To accept would cement the Hux family as one of vast importance to the town, where the mayor’s own office was what they used for a waiting room, to refuse would be to subvert that entirely. It would also probably be better if he met Armitage anywhere but the mayor’s office, if they were to start on even footing. “I am waiting to meet with my brother,” he said. “I don’t expect to be waiting much longer, I’d not deprive you of your office to work.”

Even as Mayor Linden opened his mouth to speak, muffled voices were heard outside, talking to each other as they approached, a man and a woman.

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” said the woman’s voice.

“I’m teaching him how to make soup, mother, I won’t be hurt,” came the man’s. Armitage’s. So that must be Rhodelind he was with. “I’m an adult, I can handle myself.”

“All that family has done is hurt ours. I won’t see it happen again. They think they’re better than us, and I don’t want them taking advantage of you.”

“Mother, he asked me to teach him. All I’ve done is give them some of the fish I caught the other day.”

“Brendol was a coward who would rather leave behind a family legacy than even possibly face justice and I don’t believe his sons are any better.”

“Yes, so you’ve said.” The door to the kitchen opened, and there indeed was Armitage, his hair plastered to his head and Rhodelind, her blonde hair dripping into a wet stain on her shoulder. Well, _wetter._ Her dress was already wet, and Aberforth wondered why her clothing should be so much wetter than her son’s. On her hip was a basket overflowing with what looked to be rocks and sea plants, and draped over the top was a helping of fish. Vaguely Aberforth questioned why she was allowed to bring that inside at all.

“Hello Rhodelind, Captain,” said Mayor Linden, something about him brightening oddly.

“Hello Ben,” said Rhodelind, a smile gracing her face and making her look years younger than the hard stare she gave Aberforth or the grief that had lined her face at the funeral.

“I thought we were going to meet outside,” said Armitage.

“The secretary invited me in for some hot milk,” said Aberforth evenly, trying for a smile. “I thought it only polite to accept. She seemed to believe I was from Talbot because I carry an umbrella.”

“Of course,” said Rhodelind. “Only rich people from the city can afford to carry an umbrella even outside of the Deluge. You stick out quite a bit with it.”

“Mother, he wouldn’t know that, he’s a spacer,” said Armitage, turning to her. All she did was shrug. “Right, well if you come with us, we’ll take you home and I’ll teach you like I promised.”

“I’ll wash up your mug, don’t worry,” said Mayor Linden, taking it from Aberforth. “Rhodelind, is there any way I might see you at market later today?”

“No, my catch is going to Talbot along with my son’s today,” said Rhodelind. “You’ll have to do with Ana’s catch for you to fry.” Turning, she headed out almost immediately, and Mayor Linden’s face fell horribly obviously. Oh, thought Aberforth. He’s in love with Rhodelind.

She gave him a hard look for opening the umbrella as they stepped outside, but Aberforth felt no desire to get wet, and simply followed as they walked through town, embracing that he would simply look like a fancy man from Talbot.

Raala had said she worked after school or days that there was no school to be had, and since it was the middle of the day, there was no way that the school day was done, so all the children he saw playing must have been enjoying a day off from learning. They didn’t play in the main streets but in the back alleys and open greens, drawing circular paths that they hopped along in a sort of ritual on, tossing balls back and forth and what looked to just be running around with no purpose. Aberforth couldn’t help but smile to see them, remembering days when he was a child, playing tag through the hallways of the star destroyer he lived on. He was glad these children had more space to run.

“Hux!” called Armitage, making him turn, not realizing how far he had fallen behind. “Do you have aspirations to have children of your own?”

It was sardonic, but he still felt the need to defend himself and said, “I grew up on a starship travelling to unmapped regions of the galaxy. I’m glad these children have space to play, rather than repurposed training rooms and hallways.” Armitage’s pale eyes rested on him a long time, before shaking his head and nodding towards a house and saying,

“This is our home. Come on.”

Rhodelind was walking ahead of them, stepping out of her shoes as she walked, and sliding her feet into a set of slippers as she went. Aberforth merely stepped up following Armitage who slipped out of his shoes the same.

“Shoes!” called Rhodelind, barely seeming aware of it. That was the call of a mother who had reminded her son of the same countless times, and it was only then that Aberforth noticed the shoes both Hallorans had stepped out of lined up neatly with plenty more pairs at the edge of the alcove.

“Is that what this is for?” asked Aberforth, unlacing his boots and stepping in stocking feet out of them onto the floor proper of the home. It was much smaller than Lightbridge, but was warm for it. The walls were decorated with framed pressed flowers and holos of Rhodelind and Armitage, going from Armitage as a small child to what was presumably the strike of the fishermen, with Armitage standing above a crowd and orating and looking just as if not more impressive than Brendol Jr. did when _he_ gave speeches.

“What did you think it was for?” asked Armitage, a brow raised as they walked through the home to the kitchen. That too was smaller than Lightbridge’s, though not cramped. With a shock, Aberforth realized he had never actually been inside of the home of an ordinary citizen. Even when he was on a planet, it was usually as one of the Hux brothers and they were always put up in fine accommodations due to their name, never in a home like this one.

“I wasn’t sure,” he said, keeping his voice from showing the revelation he was having.

“I shudder to think how much mud you’ve tracked around that house,” said Rhodelind, already sitting down with a wicked looking knife, cracking open what looked to be rocks and revealing soft yielding insides. The dead fish were put away, and the whole rest of the basket was sitting at Rhodelind’s elbow. “Come sit, we’re teaching you how to make Rockfish Soup.”

“Rockfish?”

“Fishermen catch the fish, Sea Women harvest the rockfish and the sea plants,” said Armitage, sitting beside his mother and taking up one of the knives. “Sometimes there’s pearls, but that’s not overly common, not around here at least.”

“Pearls like warm water,” agreed Rhodelind. “Detherby gets warm enough in the summer, but the water gets bitter in winter, that would stunt any pearl that tried to grow.”

“Here, you’ll need a knife, Rockfish don’t open easily.”

Neither Halloran was a gentle teacher, but they were efficient, and Aberforth was already used to brusqueness in imparting information. Still, it was different when the order was not “fire at will” but “twist the knife, it isn’t a lever, you’re only going to slice your hand that way.” The Rockfish’s insides were dropped into a bowl that had a wire strainer in it, and Aberforth only wondered why that was the case.

“Bairn, start heating the cream, would you?” said Rhodelind. “You can show Hux how not to scald it.”

“Right. Come on, finish that one, and I’ll show you,” said Armitage, reaching to the pots hanging overhead and pulling out a large one.

Aberforth had gotten into something of a rhythm, shucking the fish and pouring them into the bowl and discarding the shells, and he felt out of sorts following his brother to the stove. The cream was that same off white as the milk from before, and he wondered if this soup would end up tasting the same. “I don’t know the measurements for this, mostly we just guess,” Armitage was saying, “but it’s about that much cream. Maybe a little less, since you and your brother and his fiancé don’t seem to actually do any hard labor, so you won’t need as much. Do you know how to heat cream?”

“No,” answered Aberforth honestly. “I told you, I only know how to prepare rations.”

“This is worse than when I was teaching you to cook, Bairn,” sighed Rhodelind. “You at least were on my hip your whole childhood, what does this one know?”

“Ms. Halloran, my brother and I help run a nation. We may not know how to cook nor do we know how to sail nor are we especially good at swimming as you two are, but you do not know how to do both politics and military as we do.” She blinked at him, and turned her head slightly in thought, her eyes looking at him differently.

Armitage too was seemingly evaluating him, his face impassive and pale eyes unwavering as they stared him down. Then he nodded and said, “Well, those are all things we can fix, if you’re inclined.”

“What?”

“We’re working on cooking now, but if you want, sailing and swimming aren’t too hard. But for now, let’s focus on making soup.” Rhodelind was silent behind them as Armitage showed Aberforth how to stir the cream from scalding, and as he did, Armitage poured in the liquid that had come from the Rockfish, which explained the strainer, to keep the flesh and juice separate.

Next came the vegetables that needed chopping, which wasn’t so bad. At some point, Rhodelind stood and said something about getting the sea grass laid out to dry (and wasn’t that curious?) and left the room. When she did, Armitage said, his voice somewhere between probing and casual, “Mother never tells me anything about father.”

“Oh?” tried Aberforth, thinking back to what Kylo had said and Rhodelind’s own concern for her son getting hurt.

“Mm. She always says he was nothing but a liar and a coward who would forsake his duties to others and abandon family history and legacy to save his own skin, but at the funeral she wept for him. It just… I looked at him and thought ‘he doesn’t look like someone who would do all those things everyone talks about’ and I wanted to talk to you about him.”

“I…what sort of things do people talk about?”

Armitage just kept his attention on the vegetable he was chopping and said, “Stories from when the Academy was still running, things like that. But you knew him differently than anyone in Detherby did. Mother likes to pretend she wasn’t hurt, but even when I was small I could tell she didn’t like me asking after him.”

“She did seem to reject Mayor Linden soundly.” A smile curled on Armitage’s face to hear that.

“So you noticed? He’s been in love with my mother as long as I can remember, but I still don’t know what she thinks of him.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say about our father…”

“What was he like? When you spoke to him, what did you like hearing from him?”

Aberforth paused to think about it, pouring in the vegetables and watching as Armitage began to cut up the Rockfish, noticing how his half-brother kept an eye on him as he did so. “Father was strict,” he finally said. “I’m…I’m still not sure how to mourn him, you know. He always said that the ideals of who a man was should be what gets remembered, not the man himself. But he also told my brother and I that we were to inherit the glory of the Empire that fell, made it seem as though _we_ were worth remembering. He didn’t…he loved, but not the way others did. He held us at an arm’s length and didn’t often let us in. But I know he loved us, in his own way. I miss him very much, but when I try to describe him, he doesn’t seem like someone I should miss. Does that make sense?”

Armitage nodded slowly and said, “My first job, I was fresh out of school, eighteen, and probably more of a reckless idiot than I should have been. Mother taught me how to dive, but I couldn’t really be a Sea Woman, could I? So I got a job as a diver for a fishing boat, sometimes larger animals get caught in the nets and tear them apart, so divers have to go down and get them out. It’s too delicate work to have a droid do, they’d probably either kill the catch or the animal. I still do it, sometimes.

“But back then I didn’t work for the _Ancrene Wisse_ , I worked for the _Eadwacker._ The captain was a lot like how you described father. He didn’t have time for time wasters and it took a lot to know him. But he was a good and fair captain, and never asked more than I could do. He was old when I started working, he died right after I made first mate on the _Ancrene Wisse._ I didn’t know whether he’d give my ears a boxing if I mourned him or not.”

Aberforth smiled. “Father never hit us, but I know the feeling.” The smile faded as he said, “He…father never mentioned you or your mother. Mother didn’t either, we only knew you existed when you arrived at the funeral.”

Armitage went silent, and set down his knife a moment. Staring at the jars full of dried blue-green leaves, he stood silently a long moment before he took a breath and kept cutting up the Rockfish. “I guess mother was right. She always said he didn’t give a damn about anyone who didn’t share his name, and since neither of us did, he didn’t feel bad leaving us behind.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted to come,” said Aberforth, fiercely. “It wasn’t something you should wish for.” Armitage said nothing, and neither spoke until Rhodelind came back and announced that the plants were laid out to dry and the shells crushed and in the pile behind the house, whatever that meant.

“Soup’s nearly done,” Armitage said finally. “Do you want some tea with it or Vitaw?”

“I’m going back down this afternoon, I’ll take tea,” said Rhodelind. “Do you have an afternoon catch today?”

“A short one. Shouldn’t be more than a few hours. Pont’s taking the catch into Talbot today.”

“Don’t spend all evening at the public house, Bairn, your crew won’t thank you if you show up for the morning catch tomorrow taking your hangover out on them.” Armitage merely rolled his eyes and turned to Aberforth with a questioning brow.

“Sorry, what is Vitaw?” he asked.

“It’s a native liquor,” explained Armitage. “Fermented from starch plants. If you mix it with Sywy juice it tends to be more palatable.”

“If neither of you are partaking, I’ll abstain as well.”

“Gentleman,” commented Rhodelind, taking a handful of those dried leaves and putting them into three mugs, all of which had a curious strainer on the rim, likely to keep them from drinking the leaves. “Bairn, put the kettle on.”

“Mother, you are perfectly capable of putting the kettle on,” said Armitage, reaching into a cabinet and pulling out a large loaf of bread. As he cut slices from it, Rhodelind took the kettle and filled it with water, setting it to boil.

“I hope you don’t have allergies to sea grass tea,” she said. “We might have some brack tea somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

“I don’t think I’m allergic,” said Aberforth, still stirring the cream soup.

“Good.”

“Mother, where’s the butter? And the fresh cream?” asked Armitage.

“We’re out of fresh cream, I used the last of it this morning. The butter should still be in the conservator.”

“Well I don’t see it.”

“We should still have it, look behind the Sywy juice.”

“It isn’t there.” He closed the conservator door and sighed, “How badly do we need butter?”

“I won’t be eating dry bread, Bairn, and I expect you know it.”

“Alright, I’ll go talk to the neighbors, see if they have some. Honestly mother, how much butter do you need on your bread?”

“You’re one to talk, you still drown your vegetables in it.” Armitage’s face colored, but still he turned and left, leaving Rhodelind and Aberforth alone. “Turn up the heat on the soup, child, just for a minute or so. My son won’t admit it, but it needs that last flash of heat.” Wordlessly, he agreed, listening to the thick soup begin to bubble for the heat below, stirring all the more to keep it from scalding. “You know, the Hux family has been a shadow on this town since you left, doubly so on my family.”

“I’m only barely older than your son, Ms. Halloran,” tried Aberforth.

“I know that. And that’s why I’m impressed you help run a country, the most ambitious thing my son’s done is organize a fishermen’s strike. You should ask him about it. I always knew he would be a great leader. He’s smart as anything too, make no mistake. He always knew from looking at someone who you could trust and who you couldn’t, and can think on his feet better than most twice his age, which is probably why he’s made captain so young. But with your family, I’m afraid his mind’s a little clouded.”

“Ms. Halloran–”

“My son grew up knowing he had a father somewhere out in space and that his father was the one all the stories are about. And then his body came back for burial and all and sundry came to see it. Including his half-brothers. My son’s an adult, I don’t need to protect him, but I want to. You’re the only source of stories about his father that aren’t going to be hateful. I’ve tried for his sake and I can’t make myself impartial and I adored the man back in the day. Don’t hurt Armitage. I can swim better than you, and Sea Women train to hold their breath longer than any other human.”

“Are you threatening to kill me if I hurt my brother?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the first to admit it,” he said, impressed. Rhodelind was impressive, but she wasn’t as imposing as the Supreme Leader, and _he_ was the one who was Kylo’s pseudo-father and thus soon to be his brother’s pseudo-father-in-law. If one could handle being related by law to one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, one could handle a straight forward threat from a mother over her son’s well being.

“I only hope I don’t have to follow through on it. That should be enough, take it off the heat now.”

She was pouring the boiling water into the mugs while Aberforth dished out bowls of soup when Armitage returned, butter in hand. “We have to pay them back in Rockfish,” said Armitage. “Since it was you who asked for it.”

“I’ll grab one or two extras this afternoon,” said Rhodelind easily. “Alright, let’s see if the fancy man hasn’t learned how to make decent Rockfish Soup.”

The soup itself was musty like the Bos milk the cream was made from, but dark with the meat of the Rockfish. It settled warmly in his stomach, and was so vastly different from the rations they ate in space that Aberforth made a point not to let himself get too sentimental over it. The butter had the same mustiness, but the bread had sweetness to it, and the two mellowed the other, while the tea had an almost delicate taste to it, that didn’t seem to get bitter the longer it steeped, only more mature.

“Think you can make this back up at Lightbridge?” asked Armitage.

“Yes, I believe so,” Aberforth said. “Thank you for teaching me.”

“It wasn’t so hard.”

“The point still stands. You taught me something I couldn’t do. Thank you.”

“It’s only soup. It’s not like I taught you high cooking or even how to fillet a fish. What do you eat in space?”

“Rations. They’re calculated to have as much nutrition as we need, but they don’t do much in the way of tasting good. If you want, I can bring you a pack so you could try it.”

“If someone who’s grown up on that stuff says it’s bad, I don’t need to try it,” decided Armitage. “If you get to market early, you’ll be able to get enough Rockfish to feed three people. Most of the harvest goes to Talbot, so try and get there early.”

“When is market?”

“After the afternoon catch. It’s usually just after one o’clock,” said Rhodelind. “Today the week’s pay comes in, though, so it will be busier than normal.”

After the meal was done and the dishes were washed, there was still three hours until market, and with both Rhodelind and Armitage returning to the docks, Aberforth found himself asking impulsively, “Armitage, I’ve never seen how anyone actually fishes before–”

“If you’re asking if you can come on board and watch, the answer is no,” said Armitage, interrupting him flatly. “We’re a working vessel and we don’t have time for curious spacers to be getting in the way. Go back up to Lightbridge.” With that he turned and walked for the docks, leaving Rhodelind and Aberforth behind.

“He may be a bit blinded by having some connection to his father in town,” said Rhodelind, “but he runs one of the tightest ships in all of Detherby, and don’t ever try to come aboard without his permission.”

“I didn’t mean to–”

“No Hux ever _means to._ I knew your father, remember, just as well as your mother did. You’re already better than him, leaving Arkanis must have helped make you humbler than had you stayed, but you still think everyone else’s work beneath you, just because we work with our hands.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Yes you do. All spacers do and all Huxes doubly so. You have droids and troopers to do that sort of work for you, you judge us because we don’t. Your father was the same. I was blinded by how much I loved him, but even then he called me a rustic and unrefined because of my trade. Ben probably told you how important your family has been for the planet and for our town, don’t let that go to your head.” With that, she too left, leaving Aberforth behind to make his way back to Lightbridge.

The estate felt cold next to the Halloran home, with all the portraits his brother swore were supposed to be there gone. Entering the estate, Aberforth paused, and unlaced his boots, leaving them in the lowered alcove and walking with stocking feet inside the house.

“’Forth, where are your shoes?” came his brother’s voice, and when he turned there was Brendol Jr. staring at him with confusion.

“That’s what that alcove in the entry is for. Everywhere has it, you’re supposed to take off your shoes. You’ve seen how muddy it gets here, it only makes sense.”

“Have you been walking through the mud?”

“No.”

“Then why would you take off your shoes?”

“Because it’s the cultural thing, I suppose. Father loved this planet, and he wanted to be buried here, and the estate has the alcove, I don’t know why we should ignore it.”

Brendol Jr. sighed before asking, “How was your meeting with Halloran?”

“It was informative. I’ll make us soup this evening, I learned how to make Rockfish Soup.”

“Rockfish?”

“They’re these shelled fish, they look like rocks, but once you force them open they’ve got flesh inside. Rhodelind and the other sea women harvest them. You know, apparently one of our ancestors made it so Rockfish can only be harvested by traditional methods of the Sea Women?”

“Fascinating.” His tone said it was anything but. “While you were in town, did you hear anything about Kylo being around there?”

“No, actually. I met the mayor though, and learned that our brother apparently organized a strike of the fishermen until they got fair pay from Talbot.”

“I worry about what he’s gotten up to,” continued Brendol Jr. “You know how casually he destroys things on military ships, I shudder to think what disregard he’ll have for civilians.”

_Probably no more disregard than you,_ thought Aberforth, before purposefully banishing the thought from his mind. “If he does anything, it’ll come back to us, and I think he knows not to make you angry. I’m going to have to go to market to buy ingredients in a few hours, will you come with me?”

“No, I’d rather not.”

“Detherby is a tiny town,” soothed Aberforth, seeing the line of his brother’s shoulders tense up. “All you’ll have to do is walk around with me, I’ll handle the buying.”

“I don’t understand why this place wouldn’t just have a store like anywhere else.”

“Probably because this is where the stores would have gotten their fish? You know production towns all have markets, just two months ago you were complaining to me about that legislation that you were dealing with about local businesses versus larger enterprises.”

“If you’re going to lecture me…”

Pressing his hand to his older brother’s shoulder, Aberforth said, “Bren, only father ever told you off for your anxieties. I never have and I never will. You run a _nation_ , it’s understandable you should be uneasy out in public like that. And Detherby is different from anywhere we’ve ever been before, it makes sense you’d be anxious there. I thought I’d offer, not force you.”

Brendol Jr. said nothing, his face impassive, but Aberforth knew how to read his brother. There was forgiveness and thankfulness there. “Not to market. Next time you see Halloran, perhaps?”

“Ms. Halloran mentioned something about the public house, today the week’s pay comes in, everyone in town is supposed to be there.”

Brendol Jr.’s brow furrowed a moment before he nodded and said, “I’ll go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t ask me that, I’ll barricade myself up here for the rest of Grievance Leave if you do.” But he was smiling, and that made Aberforth smile too.

When time came to go to market, Aberforth stood at the doorway, staring at his umbrella. He could take it, it was raining too much for his tastes, but Raala had said it was barely raining and that only fancy folk from Talbot carried umbrellas the rest of the time. But wasn’t he more or less one of those same fancy folk? Finally, he sighed and left it behind, resigning himself to getting wet, but no worse than anyone else in Detherby.

The market was easy to find by smell alone, fish smell filling his nose almost overwhelmingly so and leading him easily to market. It was filled with people, and looked something like an imagining of rustic life. Still, he wandered through, ignoring the looks he got. Apparently news travelled fast in town, or it was small enough anyone from out of town appeared out of place.

A woman roughly his own age with red hair cropped short around her face was calling out prices for Rockfish and packages of dried sea grass, a Sea Woman, he realized.

“I’ll take a package of grass and ten Rockfish,” he said, voice confident and smooth. The woman stared at him a long moment, brow raised before she said,

“You’re one of the Hux brothers aren’t you? Sons of the son of a Bos that let the splashes happen?”

“I…madam, I’m not entirely certain what a ‘splash’ is.”

“Your father broke his oaths to Rhodelind, you know.”

“Madam, I didn’t know about her until a few days ago, and I wasn’t aware anyone made any oaths at all to a mistress.” Vaguely he thought that no one his age should be as familiar with a woman old enough to be their mother, unless perhaps that was some part of being a Sea Woman?

“Dora, he wasn’t capable of coherent thought when the Old Commandant ran away,” said a man’s voice, one vaguely familiar. “Give him his Rockfish and sea grass.”

“Didn’t think you’d be defending the Hux family, Pont,” said the woman, Dora. The man was burly, tall and wide with muscle, his face weathered but still young enough, with quick dark eyes and black hair.

“I just don’t think this one was old enough to cause even one of the splashes.”

“I remember you, from the _Ancrene Wisse_ ,” said Aberforth.

“Pont Tolbiac,” said the man, nodding towards him. “I’m your brother’s First Mate.”

“Fifteen credits,” said Dora, holding out a bag heavy with Rockfish and grass. Aberforth paid quickly, and was about to move on when Tolbiac gestured for him to wait, buying his own Rockfish.

“Your family’s left a heavy shadow, and a lot of bad blood’s started to stir up again now that you’re here. ‘Tage doesn’t want to show it, but he’s chomping at the bit for stories about who his father was that isn’t darkened by the reputation your father has around here. So for his sake, I’ll do what I can to keep you from getting run out of town.”

Aberforth blinked at him, but nodded his thanks. “What sort of bad blood?” he asked.

“It’s all to do with the Academy, but the Sea Women are tight knit, and more than Dora are going to hold a grudge for Ms. Halloran’s sake.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It’s complicated because your father died. Now there’s only you and your brother, and we can’t _rightly_ hate you, but there are those who will anyway. Hang on, I need some tubers.”

It wasn’t that different from having a protection detail, Aberforth tried to justify to himself as he walked alongside Mr. Tolbiac through market. But the justification didn’t stick; the man was too chatty, casually threw about stories and jokes where an _actual_ protection detail would be silent.

“If you come to the public house tonight instead of locking yourself up in your family’s estate, it will go a long way to making people trust you. I only sort of remember when your family still lived there, and I went and played up there with ‘Tage when he and his mother went to go take care of it when we were kids, but it’s weird to see it being inhabited again.”

“I was thinking about doing that,” agreed Aberforth.

“Good. Oh, and ‘Tage says the man who’s rented the room over the public house is your brother’s fiancé? Have they been fighting?”

“No, he goes off by himself sometimes, that’s all,” dismissed Aberforth, even as his mind skidded to a halt. Kylo was living above the public house? And people already knew him? What was the man _thinking?_

“Alright,” agreed Tolbiac, shrugging as if that were the end of that. In the rest of his life, something like that would have been poked and prodded and filed away for future blackmail, not accepted and dismissed. How refreshing. “Did ‘Tage and his mother teach you their Rockfish Soup recipe?” asked Tolbiac, looking at Aberforth’s purchases.

“Yes, earlier today.”

“Try adding a bit of chopped Lauch when you’re first heating the cream. They both say it’s awful, but nothing warms you up faster and I think you’ll need it walking around without an umbrella and dressed wrong.”

“What does that mean? The secretary at Town Hall said that too, what does it mean to be dressed wrong?”

“Well, your clothes are made from woven plant fibers, right? If that gets wet and you’re out in the cold or the wind, that can honestly hurt you. It drags the warmth right out of you. You want clothes made from woven animal hair fibers, that will keep you warm. I’ve heard enough stories to dislike your father, but I’m not about to let you suffer hypothermia.”

Aberforth blinked in surprise, and found his fingers to be worrying at his pant leg. Why was this man being so friendly? Especially if he admitted to disliking his family, why would he help?

Still, after collecting the last of the ingredients, he bid Mr. Tolbiac farewell, and turned back up towards Lightbridge, confusion swirling in his mind. He stood out for having an umbrella and clothes made of the wrong material, and Detherby was so different from the rest of his life, he wasn’t sure if he actually minded that or not. Was it good that he should appear so different from the inhabitants of this tiny backwater town? Or should he try not to be so different?

“’Forth!” greeted Brendol Jr. “Mrs. Sillye called, we’re going to have lunch in Talbot with her in a few days. She wants to know if we have any specifications about how we want the estate kept while we’re gone. Are you alright?”

“Hmm? Yes, perfectly alright.”

“How was market?” his brother’s tone was cautious, and Aberforth knew he should be assuring him that it was fine, he was fine, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He was the buffer for his brother for the rest of their lives, and for now he just wanted to be honest with him.

“Apparently people in town didn’t like father. There’s bad stories, and if we’re treated well, it’s in spite of those stories. What did father do that would make a whole town hate him?”

Brendol Jr. frowned and took the bags from Aberforth as he kicked off his shoes, leaving them in the alcove. “I think it’s been a long time since we left,” he said slowly. “And Arkanis has changed hands multiple times now. It was Imperial, then without larger affiliation, it was courted by the Republic for a while, and now it belongs to the Order. The mythos about the Imperial Academy is going to change according to who owns it. The second the Republic showed up, they’d be spreading tales against father, you know that.”

“They kept mentioning ‘splashes.’”

At least his brother looked just as confused at that. Rhodelind Halloran wasn’t a gentle teacher and admitted herself that she couldn’t make herself unbiased even for her own son’s benefit, but at least she’d tell him what a splash was without trying to make him feel better. His brother remembered life before exile far better than he did, but it seemed sometimes there were yet plenty things he hadn’t known about at the time.

“When are we meeting with Mrs. Sillye?” asked Aberforth, turning the conversation.

“In a few days, she’s getting reservations at some fine restaurant, she’ll let us know when to meet her.”

“Right. Have you eaten?”

“’Forth if you make an actual meal for us and we have to go back to what mother’s maid thought we could handle making, we’re both going to be angry. Save the soup for dinner.”

They did, Aberforth showing his brother how to twist open the rockfish and how to cook the soup, telling him about Pont Tolbiac’s insistence on adding Lauch (whatever that was) and Rhodelind Halloran’s advice to flash heat the soup for the last minute or so.

It wasn’t as good, the cream scalded and the proportions not quite right, but it was still for the most part pleasantly musty and dark, and it was hard to mess up tea. This was richer than the soups Taala had left, and settled in their stomachs in a far more pleasing way, warming from the inside.

“I am never going back to rations,” said Brendol Jr, already on his second bowl. Aberforth laughed, realizing as he did that this was the first time he had laughed since their father had taken a turn for the worst. Had it really been that long?

“You know, Mr. Tolbiac said that if we do go to the public house tonight, it might help people trust us more,” said Aberforth, spooning at his soup to dredge up the rockfish before letting them fall back into the cream broth.

“It will either help people like us, or give an opening for public shunning. In either case, it will give us a better idea of where we’ll be for the next week and a half.”

“Hmm. Oh, and apparently your fiancé is renting the room above the public house.”

“Well, at least he isn’t out drowning in the mud somewhere.”

“Bren, do you even _like_ Kylo?”

His brother set down his spoon then, staring into his soup as he said softly, “It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. Not now. I respected him very much, I was perfectly willing to work alongside him, and then suddenly we were engaged to marry. There are worse foundations to start a marriage on, and I can’t call this one off.”

“Why did Leader Snoke engage you two so suddenly?”

“I don’t know, ‘Forth. He just said something about it being a good thing for the future. But he didn’t explain how.”

“Well…well we just have to believe that our Leader will guide us, I suppose.”

“Do you not trust me to help lead the country, little brother?”

“No.” The brother’s may have inherited their mother’s coloring, but Brendol Jr. had perfected their father’s disappointed stare, and for some reason to see it on his face only made Aberforth smile down towards his soup.

After dinner was finished, Brendol Jr. received a message from Mrs. Sillye, informing them that they would meet for lunch at “Larich Gardens” which was, as a quick search through Arkanis’ planetary holonet informed them, apparently one of the finest establishments in Talbot. That was something they were used to, their father’s influence (and lately their own) meant that usually they were wined and dined, but it was going to be different, because Mrs. Sillye was _family_ and they had never met any family on their father’s side before.

It was that uncertainty that both Hux brothers felt as they made their way down to Detherby, down to the public house. Their position in town was difficult, they knew this evening would cement it either with the people respecting their being there, or being forever shunned. With a solemn nod to each other, Brendol Jr. opened the door, leading them in.

The public house was large, and filled to brimming. Couples and groups talked and drank and ate, the bar serving drinks that people carried with them back to their tables. In a corner, three musicians were playing quiet music. Rhodelind was there, talking to the musicians and drinking some cloudy pale drink. Aberforth saw Pont Tolbiac at a table laughing with a group of other men, but it was Brendol Jr. who pointed out how in the far corner Kylo was sitting with none other than Armitage, leaning forward and speaking intently to him.

It was to them that the brothers went, Kylo seeing them come and leaning back in his seat, making Armitage turn. “I see you finally came out,” said the captain. “What took you so long?”

“I admit I don’t see much purpose for my being in Detherby,” said Brendol Jr. diplomatically, sitting beside his fiancé as Aberforth sat down the same.

“Loads are the same,” agreed Armitage, taking a sip of his drink, something dark as the ocean floor. “I swear, half those who leave for Talbot never come back at the end of the day. Detherby’s a place for leaving.”

“It started to fail when father and the rest left, didn’t it?” asked Aberforth. “Only, with the Academy and all.”

“The Academy was a blight,” muttered an old man sitting alone at the table next to them, drinking the same pale drink as Rhodelind. “D’you know how many boys got the splash from that place?”

“It’s alright, Norton, they’re spacers, and too young besides,” said Armitage.

“ _You’re_ too young!”

“Yes, but I’ve grown up around here and what child didn’t sneak up to the old ruins?”

“You’ve been?” asked Kylo.

“Not for years. I was eighteen, and every kid heard the ghost stories. My father being who he was, I was supposed to be a magnet for ghosts, bring them all running for revenge. That stopped soon as mother found out.”

“Ms. Halloran is truly intimidating,” agreed the old man, Norton.

“ _Thank you_ Norton.”

“You’re the one debating philosophy the last fifteen minutes with this strange fellow, you expect me not to wonder just how you’ve fallen in with the Commandant’s sons and their lot?”

“Norton, _I’m_ one of the Commandant’s sons.”

“You’re different. You’re of the water like your mother. These boys…aren’t.”

“Yes, well, they’re here now, aren’t they? They didn’t fly away immediately. They need to stay to fully inherit the house, they haven’t abandoned their oaths. They’re not like my father.”

“Hmm.”

Armitage sighed and said, “Sorry, Norton.”

“Ah, you’re alright. Too much Yallee, do you think?” Armitage rolled his eyes, and stood without a word, going to the bar, startling his companions. “He’s going to get you drinks. Never accuse Armitage in lacking manners.”

“Norton, is it?” asked Aberforth.

“Yes.”

“You were alive during the Academy, when did Detherby become a place for leaving, exactly?”

“Almost immediately,” said the old man, snorting into his drink. “Soon as your father took those who’d leave with him and abandoned the Hallorans, what made this place grow in the first place left a void and things began to fall apart. Detherby’s better without the Academy, don’t mistake that, but it’s a town that used to be bigger. Those who remember how many splashes a year there were know that it’s better to have empty buildings than ghosts, but the young ones just see a dying town. Armitage was the same, once.”

“Same about what?” asked Armitage, carrying two glasses of pearly blue that he set before his two half-brothers. “Vitaw mixed with Sywy juice. You don’t like it, you go buy your own drink.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten when you and that Tolbiac boy used to go sailing out and away all day. Your mother went mad with worry when she’d wake up and you were gone.”

“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad,” said Armitage, glancing to Kylo of all people. “It was just along the coast to Cucan.”

“The second you were hired on the _Eadwacker_ you were tugging at every sailor’s sleeve to help deliver the catch to Talbot.”

“Norton, I was _eighteen._ ”

“And you wanted to get out of Detherby if it killed you.”

Armitage closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, something about him was sharp and strong as steel as he said, “Norton, you’ve butted in enough. It’s one thing to listen in when telling the stories of the old gods, but it’s another thing for something like this.”

“Yes sir, Captain.” But Norton was smiling as she stood, taking the pearly drink in hand and going to the musicians.

Aberforth took a long drink of the Vitaw and Sywy juice, and rose his brows at it. It was smooth and sweet and tangy all at once, and he wasn’t sure what was the Vitaw and what was the Sywy, but he thought to himself that he really should go looking for that fabled Sywy wine.

“Norton said something,” said Brendol Jr. “What is a ‘splash?’”

“It’s a crude word for a sea burial,” said Kylo, glancing at Armitage. “Am I wrong?”

“No, you’re right on the mark,” said Armitage. “The Academy had a lot of splashes in its time, apparently there was some sick boys club father had that you could only join by being accomplice to murder of another student. That’s why kids go sneaking up there, and that’s why in my time everyone thought I could make the ghosts come. Everyone’s at least a little interested in the occult, and in Detherby? The occult’s just up the hill.”

The Hux brothers went silent to hear that, while Armitage simply watched them, drinking silently and watching how they’d react. They hadn’t heard _that_ before. Kylo too seemed content to sit in silence, watching the room at large as people passed Armitage and spoke to him. It was a long time before either of them could say anything at all.

“I want to see it,” said Aberforth, still staring into his drink as if eye contact would shatter his resolve. “The Academy. I was too young, and my brother was too. You’ve grown up here, you went up there as a kid. I want to see it, will you show me?”

“That’s quite a request, considering so far all you’ve done is make requests out of me,” said Armitage smoothly.

“Do you have requests from us, then?” asked Kylo.

“None from _you._ But everything I know about Father is the splashes, are the ghosts, are what cruelties he did up there. But you don’t see him like that, no one at the funeral did. I want to know how you saw him.”

“That’s all you want?” asked Brendol Jr.

“Listen, I love my job. When I was younger I wanted to leave, yes. But I love what I do. I don’t want to go up to space like you do, I don’t want to be forced into whatever molds you three were because frankly it looks exhausting holding your shoulders like that. I’m your bastard half-brother who works with his hands, I don’t want some lofty political influence. I just want something simple.”

“Come up to Lightbridge when you can,” said Aberforth before anyone else could speak. “I’ll tell you what I remember of him at least.”

And if his brother and Kylo didn’t agree, well they could simply avoid them, the estate was large enough.

The next day brought Armitage to their house in the afternoon, after the day’s work was done for him. To see him in the house was odd, something about their half-brother belonged to the endless rains and the oceans filled with fish, not the carefulness of Lightbridge.

“I haven’t been up here in a while,” he said, stepping out of his shoes. “Good to know you haven’t destroyed it.”

“Thank you Armitage for all your faith in us,” said Aberforth, rolling his eyes. “What’s in the bag?”

“Whitehead and bread. I think we should have father’s toast.”

And as Aberforth watched, Armitage sliced up the fish easily, knife sliding through the flesh without hesitation, toasting the bread and cooking the fish. And as Armitage cooked, Aberforth told stories from the Exile, of how his father was cold and hard when leading them to a new world but when he returned to their quarters gave a smile and told his sons how it wouldn’t be long before they had a new home with a sky and a sun and a moon or two and he’d take them to the ocean and let them see what it was like to see one.

“You didn’t see an ocean before you were teenagers?” asked Armitage.

“Nowhere would take us in until then. We saw them from orbit, but not in person, no.”

“That’s awful.”

“Have you ever even seen the stars?”

“No, and I can’t imagine they’re all that spectacular.” Aberforth raised his brows, and Armitage rolled his eyes with a chuckle. “Alright, I get it. Where did you end up settling?”

“Well, that’s tricky.”

“How is it tricky? Where do you live?”

“Well that’s just it. By the time we were teenagers, we only went to live where the New Academy was allowed to be. And from there we went right back to space to be part of the military. Bren and I don’t really have a home outside of our ships.”

Armitage blinked at him a few times before saying, “You have Lightbridge though, and Arkanis.”

“This is the first time we’ve been back here since the exile. Sure we have family history here, and a bit of actual family besides, but we never really thought of this place as home. When this planet came under Order control, we didn’t feel the need to come visit.”

Armitage frowned and turned back to what he was making, saying nothing more. No words were said until the Whitehead on toast was finished, and even then Armitage only gestured for Aberforth to follow him. There was a room on the top floor, painted a delicate white and completely void of any furniture, but it had a wall entirely of windows, looking out over Detherby and out to the ocean.

“This was your nursery,” said Armitage, sitting down. “You would have probably been in here until you were six or so, and then you’d get a room to yourself.”

Aberforth joined him, sitting on the floor and looking out over the town, looking at Detherby, looking at the lush flora all around it. He had grown up looking at stars and nebulae and whole planets, but if things hadn’t fallen apart, he would have looked at the ocean and a single small town and all the teal flora. And somehow, Armitage knew all this about him.

“Did you have a nursery like this, then?”

“You think we could afford a whole extra room?” laughed Armitage, and Aberforth’s face burned. He knew better than that, and now he sounded like an idiot.

He took a bite of the small meal in front of him, to shut himself up, and blinked to try it. Arkanii cuisine over salted their fish, he remembered thinking, but the bread was sweet and the result was something actually very pleasant. Which shouldn’t have surprised him, his mother’s maid hadn’t been Arkanii either, perhaps she just wasn’t very good at this style of cuisine.

“Father always said that the person was not important,” said Aberforth. “He said order and the status quo was more important than the individual. He sort of crammed my brother and I into roles, my brother has more than a few anxieties but father never allowed them. He didn’t want us to mourn, because what he did for the Order was more important than who he was.”

“But you loved him,” said Armitage.

“I did. I still do. It wasn’t malicious, what he did. It’s just who he was.”

Armitage didn’t speak for a while, just ate his meal and stared out to the sea. “Do you think he would have done the same to me, if you all had stayed?”

“Maybe. It’s how he showed he loved someone.”

“Well that settles it, he wouldn’t.” Aberforth turned to look at Armitage, who just looked back at him and said, “He left mother and I behind. He didn’t love us. I’m alright with that. I haven’t been sighing after a father my whole life, I just want to know who he was now that I’ll never get the chance.”

There was a footstep behind them, and they turned to see Kylo there. “I felt you were here,” he said, looking to Armitage.

“Are you sure you didn’t just smell the fish?” asked Armitage, tone dry and brow raised.

“Perhaps that as well.”

Aberforth had no idea what had happened in those few nights Kylo had rented out the room over the public house, but he had never once seen Kylo allow any answer but pure mysticism, let alone with such good humor. They had been talking, when Brendol Jr. and Aberforth had come down, and now he wondered about what.

Kylo ended up joining them, and Aberforth hadn’t realized just how often Kylo had met with their father. He had tales of his later life, when the engagement had been put in place. Aberforth didn’t see his father much in later years, too busy with his own work, and that Kylo told more hurt, in a way. But it was a hurt directed at himself, hurt that he hadn’t made a point to see his father more often.

Finally, Armitage declared he had to go as some crew member’s great uncle was turning eighty and there would be a celebration he had to get to, but as he was slipping on his shoes, he said, “I might be able to take you to the Academy in a few days, once the afternoon catch is done.”

“My brother and I are going to Talbot tomorrow, we’re having lunch with our cousin,” said Aberforth. “But beyond that our only obligation is to stay here so mother will be satisfied we’ve inherited the place.”

“When you’re there, go to the Talbot Portrait Gallery. I think that will prove to be important to you.” He said no more, and walked out into the rain, letting the door close behind him.

“Portrait Gallery?” echoed Aberforth, turning to Kylo questioningly. But the Knight just rose a brow and turned and walked away.

Brendol Jr. had been for a walk, it seemed, coming home with boots covered to the ankle in mud, where he had to take them off or track mud through the whole house. Aberforth found him sitting on the raised step, cleaning them off best he could. “Space is _clean,_ ” he was muttering to himself.

“I had the same thing happen to mine,” offered Aberforth, sitting down next to his brother.

“It’s too muddy here. I know Father loved it, but I much prefer space. Has Armitage come, yet?”

“Yes, he came and went, actually.” Brendol Jr. nodded, but his face was oddly drawn. “Did you want to talk with him?”

“He’s not so bad, I think I would have, if only for a bit. And don’t go telling anyone that.”

“Of course. He did suggest we go to the Talbot Portrait Gallery though.”

“That must be where the family portraits are.”

“I think I’d like to see them.”

The next day, they rode back across the lush wetness of Arkanis to Talbot, a city of enormous proportions compared to Detherby, and yet tiny compared to other cities they had visited in their lives. It was odd, to think of it as both large and small all in one.

Still, here most everyone carried umbrellas to stay dry, and wore slick black coats over their clothing to keep dry. And Aberforth could suddenly see what Detherby did, folk who were scared of their own atmosphere and overly minded a bit of wet. His brother actually had to cough pointedly at him to make him take up his own umbrella.

The boulevards were large, and had deep troughs at the edges of the road that water drained away into. There were transports both public and private, and clunky ones that clearly were deliveries made from towns like Detherby. It was a bit of a shock after that small half-empty town that huddled close to the shore.

Larich Gardens, on the other hand was clean and warm and dry, and had a reception room in front of the dining room were people elegantly dressed were sipping at hot teas and mulled drinks to chase away the wet damp of the outside. Mrs. Sillye was there with a stout man with a clean kept beard, sharing a pot of tea, though their cousin set down her cup and came over to greet the Hux brothers.

“I’m so glad we could meet,” she said. “Come, turn in your coats and umbrellas, you must want some tea to warm up.”

“It is not that cold out,” said Aberforth, slipping in before his brother as he always ended up doing. “Space is much colder, you know.”

“But not half so wet,” added Brendol Jr.

“I expect not. This is my husband, Jaley. Jaley, these are my relations on my father’s side; General Brendol Hux Jr and Colonel Aberforth Hux.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” said Mr. Sillye, shaking their hands firmly. “You are our guests, I’ll go get us a table.”

In short enough order they were seated in a finely decorated room with mirrors all around to make it feel infinite, the seams hidden by tall plants and lit by a finely wrought chandelier all of glass. It was lovely, but there were hundreds of these types of restaurants in every city they had ever been to. It was beautiful, but ubiquitous.

Mr. and Mrs. Sillye make polite conversation as they were seated, asking after Lightbridge and if everything was to their satisfaction. In turn, the Hux brothers asked politely after their daughter and how she was doing. A menu was set before each of them, and Aberforth startled. There was an opening dish of Rockfish, but it cost forty credits for four of them. He scanned through the rest, and there was a Rockfish soup, costing forty as well. It cost fifteen for ten _plus_ a sachet of tea in Detherby.

“We were advised to visit the Talbot Portrait Gallery while we were here,” his brother was saying, and Aberforth shook himself out of thinking about how much more things cost here and wondering exactly what the fishermen had been paid before Armitage’s strike. “I expect the family portraits are there?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Sillye agreed. “They make up a significant part of the collection. The Hux family is very old, you can trace large portions of artistic history through them. They always made a point to hire artists using new techniques.”

“I’m passing familiar with one of the curators,” said Mr. Sillye. “We contacted him when we started seeing the condition of the older pieces deteriorating, and donated the portraits so that they could be preserved.”

“That was very kind of you,” said Aberforth.

“Yes, well, your father gave us quite the chewing out for saving his ancestors without his permission,” said Mrs. Sillye. “Your mother agreed with us and talked him down, but I thought we’d have to break the hearts of all those museum folk and take them back for a moment or two.”

“Mrs. Sillye, forgive me if this is rude, but why did you not leave Arkanis when our father left?”

“Yes, but you must understand. My father was cousins to your grandfather. It was already a somewhat distant relation. Jaley took my name, you know, no one of the Rebel Alliance nor the New Republic was storming Talbot demanding the Sillye family’s blood. We weren’t in danger like you were, we could keep our heads down and keep Lightbridge and all the family history from getting destroyed.”

“One of the reasons Arkanis joined the Order at all was because of the history with the Hux family,” added Mr. Sillye. “And you have my wife and her family to thank for that.”

“It was not all _that,_ Jaley is exaggerating.”

“I’m sure that your role was not so small as you say,” said Brendol Jr. And then quietly, looking at the menu, he said only, “Oh.”

Brow furrowing, Aberforth looked to see what could cause that in his brother, and saw listed under the lighter fare whitehead fish on toast, called “The Commandant’s Favorite.” Anyone who came to eat at Larich Gardens knew what had been their father’s favorite meal, while they had only learned it when their illegitimate half-brother had told them. It wasn’t easy to see.

Their order was nevertheless placed, and with it Mr. Sillye ordered some drink called “Third Sonata” for the table, which proved to be a deep gold drink served in a wide glass that tasted like a star’s corona. “There’s been a fad on Arkanis recently of using our own planet’s bounty,” he explained. “Native fruits and animal products over introduced species. This is made with a syrup of the Disi fruit.”

“Jaley thinks it’s a fad,” said Mrs. Sillye. “But I disagree, I think it’s simply a changing attitude.”

“We’ve never had anything like this,” agreed Aberforth. “Military rations tend to be made from the more universal foodstuffs. I’ve tried Bos milk for the first time here, and I must say I prefer it to the blue milk we drink in space.”

“Arkanis has never been a major player in export,” added Brendol Jr. “Since coming here, there have been no shortage of foods we don’t see elsewhere. Culturally, that’s quite a strength other places my brother and I have been don’t have.”

“You see?” said Mrs. Sillye, and her husband merely smiled and took a sip of his drink.

Lunch passed in much the same way, and the meal was finished with a large pot of tea, a mixture of sea grass with mountainous plants or so it was described to be. It had a far more complex flavoring than the tea drunk in Detherby, and Aberforth much preferred this blend to that which the Sea Women harvested.

“We heard that there was a fishermen’s strike in Detherby,” said Aberforth. “Did the Sea Women join in?”

“I remember the strike,” said Mr. Sillye. “Wedla, wasn’t the Halloran family involved with it?”

“Yes, I do believe Mr. Halloran was the organizer of it,” said Mrs. Sillye. “Detherby’s Sea Women joined, yes. It was quite the event in Talbot, suddenly no one could get fish without paying enormous sums to get it shipped in from other coasts.”

“News sources went out to Detherby, there were daily updates about the negotiations once those began, it was quite something.”

Aberforth took a long drink of his tea, mulling over the fact that he was feeling actually rather proud of his little half-brother. A look at his elder brother told him he wasn’t alone in that feeling. Brendol Jr. hadn’t been dealing with Armitage much, he preferred to deal with grief with doubling down into his work than reach out to those around him, but still to hear your blood had made such a mark was really rather something. If they had brought Armitage with them in Exile, who knew how far he could have gone.

When lunch was done, the Sillye couple offered to take them to the Portrait Gallery, and to see if the curator they knew was in that day to show them the collection. The Hux brothers accepted the first, but not the second. They’d rather look at their own pace at their ancestors, rather than hear an art historian gush about the artists hired or the brush stroke or whatnot.

The Talbot Portrait Gallery was a large modern building, instead of the sharply gabled blocky buildings of Detherby it was built entirely of siphoning angles, so the sheets of rain slid cleanly off of it, and instead of the water digging a trench filled with plants, it had a surrounding pool of water. On a planet where the sun actually came out and the sky and stars could be seen, it might have been called a reflecting pool, but Arkanii natives never saw the stars and deeply historically, their father had told them, the presence of the moons had only been figured out by the physics of the tides, rather than by seeing them.

The inside was clean and warm, with the reception room to turn in the umbrellas and slick coats so one did not drip on the inside of the building proper. It had the same function as the alcove at Lightbridge, to keep the wet outside, but in a way that did not require the removal of shoes. It seemed that their father’s death had been more important than they had realized, for they were recognized almost immediately as having come to Arkanis for their father’s funeral and even without the Sillye’s to call their curator friend one was quickly summoned to show them up to the Hux Family Portrait Gallery.

The curator, an aging non-human who introduced themselves as Dr. Sisley, didn’t expound on the quality of the art, though, merely stood by and answered any questions they posed as to who a particular subject was, or why they had been painted where they were. Apparently each artistic movement, concerned above all with capturing a subject the way a holo couldn’t, had their own codes for what something might represent.

Soon enough Aberforth actually forgot Dr. Sisley was there, too concerned in the paintings that had once adorned Lightbridge’s walls. His family remembered that though he did not, and even Armitage had seen these portraits again and again, had stared at the family that could never be his. Aberforth wondered, did Armitage look at this [red haired woman in the tangle of the garden](http://68.media.tumblr.com/90efdc498eb000a2a819c5eaadb425e0/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o1_500.jpg) and think about the Hux family’s great established name next to the obscurity of the Hallorans, or did he look at [the three sisters pale and frail](http://68.media.tumblr.com/f66e660d7367fd2bf014f8bbbdbd771b/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o2_500.jpg) and think to himself how glad he was to be of a profession that never left one delicate as a Sywy fruit?

There was [a great aunt who was painted with such acute detail it looked as if it were a holo](http://68.media.tumblr.com/aed02912e71bb3feb01d2414ef210a7f/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o3_500.gif) which Dr. Sisley told them was of a movement to promote the talent of the organic to emulate organic without technological help, hung next to [some Hux bride who refused to look at the viewer](http://68.media.tumblr.com/8747dbec436acdc842b339839fdcb893/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o4_500.gif). Her groom was nearby in a deliberately [sketched out and unfinished portrait in that same profile view](http://68.media.tumblr.com/e3026a2ae0a813526b4eb25468868493/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o5_400.jpg) and their daughter, [a rather unwell looking girl](http://68.media.tumblr.com/204730d5bfda61ad1a4081f250ed9684/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o6_1280.jpg) listing on the couch where she sat between the two. Staring at the parents and daughter was [a mother dressed for a costume party](http://68.media.tumblr.com/8defa0a6f6d6913aefdc9bf0dbc05f6a/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o7_400.jpg) in a gown too cumbersome to do much but make others admire the quality of the thing while by her side [a little boy stared out at the viewer from inside a dark room](http://68.media.tumblr.com/96ac0fbc986afa3dbf8e1471066760f1/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o8_1280.jpg), which Dr. Sisley explained to them was a post-mortem portrait of a son of the Hux family who had died in an accident, a way to keep him alive and remember him.

[A distant ancestress sat expectantly in a fine gown](http://68.media.tumblr.com/452f4b1ced9e0c15207f05c5f0930864/tumblr_oljk1migyF1vd6o25o9_1280.jpg), gaze fixed firmly off where they could not see, [a young daughter sat enthroned in the lush vegetation](http://68.media.tumblr.com/2bf8c204098ce81b8193f440f5bd1ba4/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o1_250.jpg) of the Lightbridge lands, poking idly at it with some stick, [a patriarch in somber black](http://68.media.tumblr.com/3f40a2022ef4902354336aac6a772dfa/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o2_1280.jpg) sat staring directly at them, book of plants open at his side, unattended. [A set of twin girls with dark hair and eyes](http://68.media.tumblr.com/d69f36629c1391fbe29ba3e104fb158d/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o3_1280.jpg) stared at their descendants before them, and Aberforth felt almost intimidated for how these two women alive two hundred years before himself stared without hesitation at him and his own brother. There was similarity in the noses that he saw in Brendol Jr. and himself, and felt unnerved that time didn’t change how close they were in looks, and quickly moved away to [an ancestor who stood before a desk and gazed out at him impassively](http://68.media.tumblr.com/ad980ba318054276d9ea548617c4aa27/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o4_1280.jpg).

His brother called him away from [the single statue in the collection](http://68.media.tumblr.com/e6f9e6fae5a56a7c50972b74bff5995a/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o5_250.jpg), a bust of a woman carved from marble with the illusion that a translucent veil was draped around her, to come see [a young man in dress uniform](http://68.media.tumblr.com/a6a54bad15eb3054cc51e17dfe4d520a/tumblr_oljkjebrCG1vd6o25o6_400.jpg), half smiling at the viewer, hand tucked into his coat as if reaching for the kerchief that all officers kept with them, his hair close to his scalp as if it were still wet.

The plaque next to it said “Commander Brendol Warrington Hux.”

This was his father as a young man, freshly made Commander. This was before the Academy, before he had married, probably before he took Rhodelind as his mistress. His father who loved this planet dearly and wanted to be laid to rest in the sea by the old abandoned estate, who had been upset that these portraits should be taken from that home. His father who smiled as he looked down on his mistress’ profession and yet loved his family that had long ago declared that profession a cultural treasure to be protected. His father who had loved his sons but who stipulated a cadet could only be in his close circle if they allowed and took part in another cadet’s murder.

Their father had been a complicated man, but he had still and always been their _father_ , and Dr. Sisley was very deliberately stepping away, leaving the brothers in front of the painting. In his last years their father didn’t really look much like this, but it was still so clearly him that it hurt the both of them. Brendol Jr. reached and put his hand heavily on Aberforth’s shoulder, both lending him comfort and holding himself up.

They stood there for a long time, hardly admiring the art but merely staring at their father, both coming to grips that he was gone, just like everyone else in this gallery. That was the point of these portraits, so the sitter might be remembered, but it was one thing to look an ancestor hundreds of years before one’s self and another thing entirely to look at one’s father.

Finally they pulled away, and still a bit shook from an experience that shouldn’t have shaken them, they toured the rest of the collection, not quite ready to return to the quiet emptiness of Lightbridge. Dr. Sisley came with them, and only now did they start describing each piece of artwork, presumably they had realized that the Hux Family Portraits were not distant enough to appreciate hearing it described like the other portraits were. Neither Brendol Jr. nor Aberforth actually understood half of what they were being told, and neither of them had any great love of art in the first place.

Dr. Sisley did seem to notice that, and began to expound less and less about the art and gave general points about why a piece was considered a masterpiece and why the gallery had bought another work and whatnot. They still couldn’t help but describe contrasting color theory, and Aberforth didn’t understand what it meant to put yellow and violet next to each other beyond that it looked like a shadow under a yellow light or why this was so important to be pointed out. His brother was much the same, he could tell from the politely blank expression on his face.

Eventually they were let go, and as the transport took them back to Lightbridge, Aberforth idly ordered Disi fruit syrup to be delivered, because that was a brighter more intense flavor than anything else he had eaten on the planet and though the musty and deep flavors of the food so far in Detherby were good, he would much rather have some form of variation.

They spent the rest of the day rather quiet, and Kylo let them be, once his fiancé told him “They had father’s portrait. It was odd, to see him as a young man.” And that night, Aberforth dreamed of painted eyes staring at him in stony silence and his father climbing into a portrait no matter how hard Aberforth tried to stop him.

The next day, right after a lunch of a fish that through group effort they managed to fillet and topped with Disi syrup, there was a groaning dusty ring of the bell. Brendol Jr. was the one to open it, to reveal Armitage there. “Good afternoon,” said Armitage. “I talked to my first mate, he’s willing to help sail you to the Academy, it’s tricky to get there and none of you can sail, so.”

“Could we not just walk?” asked Brendol Jr., clearly taken aback and yet appreciative at how Armitage jumped directly to business.

“You could, but it would take longer and they’ve long since put up fences and the like to keep kids out, and I don’t know how good you are at hopping fences. Sailing’s easier.”

“Are we going today?” asked Aberforth.

“Unless you have other plans.” Kylo said nothing, simply walked out into the rain and started down towards Detherby. The Hux brothers followed behind, Aberforth without an umbrella, and Brendol Jr. uncertainly leaving his behind.

Detherby was unchanged from the last time Aberforth had been there, market was clearly in session from the smell of seafood, and Armitage offered lightly that his mother was selling the Sea Women’s catch that day, or at least a small portion of it while the rest was being taken to Talbot.

“Mayor Linden is going to be buying a fair share of Rockfish then, I expect,” said Aberforth, and was rewarded by seeing Armitage actually smile.

The docks were still busy even if most everyone was at market, but on the beach nearby it was mostly children digging in the sand or splashing in the water. On the docks proper sailors were working on their ships, dragging ropes and chains on and off board, a single rusted old R2 unit rolling beeping off a ship. Aberforth didn’t speak much in the way of binary, but it seemed to be explaining what it had fixed in the engine to the sailor escorting it back to the dockmaster.

And off to the side of the large fishing boats was a small craft, with a tall sail and a motor together. On it Pont Tolbiac was waiting, idly tying and untying dozens of different knots. He jerked in surprise when Armitage simply jumped into the boat, and admonished him saying, “Stop scaring me like that, ‘Tage. Someday you’ll make my heart give out and then what?”

“You’ll survive,” dismissed Armitage. “You say that every time I have to dive.”

“You take ages to come up, someday your mother’s training isn’t going to be enough.”

“Just help them onboard, Pont.” Rolling his eyes, the burly man turned to help, though Kylo refused it, silently climbing into the boat without so much as looking unsteady. Pont grinned to see Aberforth again, and asked,

“Did you try adding Lauch to the soup like I told you?”

“No one but you likes Lauch in Rockfish soup,” said Armitage, halfway up the sail and checking some line. When he had gotten up there, Aberforth had no idea.

“You neglected to mention what Lauch is,” said Aberforth only, uncertain to feel the small boat shifting under his feet. “We don’t have it in space.”

“ _Spacers,_ ” said Pont in a tone of disbelief, before saying, “right, all of you sit down. If any of you three try to stand up on this type of boat while we’re going, you’re going to get yourselves thrown overboard. The ocean’s treats experienced and inexperienced sailors the same way, and we’re going the tricky route as is. If _we_ think it’s hard, you three would get killed.”

“I have been on boats before,” said Kylo. He was ignored, however, in favor of Pont settling by the helm and Armitage casting off, pulling the lines onto the boat as Pont turned on the engine, the rumbling gentle as they piloted away into the open ocean.

This was very different from being on the funeral barge, Aberforth thought, as Armitage pulled on a line and tied it off, the sail catching the wind and pushing the whole craft ahead. “See, the Academy had access to a small bay, really hard to sail in and out of,” explained Armitage over the sound of the water rushing around their boat. “Cadets practiced swimming there, I guess. But that’s how Pont and I always went as kids.”

“We were probably stupidly endangering our lives,” added Pont, shrugging as if to say _but what can you do_.

“We haven’t done this in years, not since my mother found out we were going, so once we get close to the inlet, if you could refrain from talking that would be helpful. Until then, feel free to talk.”

Aberforth was feeling rather sea sick from the speed and the rocking together, both far more than there had been on the funeral barge, and so he didn’t open his mouth. Kylo however started talking with them, Brendol Jr. just staring at the town sliding away behind them, the sheer amount of vegetation all around it, and the cliffs they were angled towards. They weren’t overly large, but that was where the Academy was.

Soon enough, they were ploughing the water close to the base of the cliffs that siphoned the wind upwards and pulled them along at a nice clip, and Armitage’s pale eyes caught on something in the water, and went to some line and called, “Pont there’s a sandbar. Speed up.” Tugging on the line, it pulled the sail to catch more of the wind as the motor sped up in time, the sudden jump in speed unsettling Aberforth’s stomach more, to where all he could do was just hold onto the boat.

“Halloran, what are you doing?!” demanded Brendol Jr., the anger in his tone from fear. “We’re going to go to ground!”

“We are not. Speed up, Pont.” Again the boat sped up, and Aberforth’s knuckles were white from clinging so hard to the boat in an effort not to be thrown off and not to throw up.

“Halloran!” Kylo looked exhilarated, grinning sharply as they sped faster and faster towards the shallows.

“Faster, Pont!” said Armitage, pulling harder on the rope. Spray was launching around them in a sparkling curtain, and they rose up out of the water, skipping across it more than ploughing through it. The shallows drew closer and closer and suddenly were behind them, the boat sailing easily over them without so much as brushing the sand below. Once they hit deeper water, Armitage slacked the rope as Pont slowed the engine, settling them back into the water again.

“You know your ships,” praised Kylo.

“We made him captain for a reason,” said Pont with a grin, a hand lazily turning the helm to guide them along.

“Right, and now is when you all shut up,” said Armitage, eyes tracking some point on the cliff faces. “I’m folding up the sail, is the tide headed in?”

As their half-brother climbed up the mast and settled easily at the top, pulling and tying off the sail, Pont checked some unnamable quality of the sea around them that apparently only he could see. “You got the timing right, it’s just starting,” he said.

“Engine off, I don’t want it getting tangled in seagrass.”

“Yes sir, Captain.”

Apparently when the tide was heading into the little bay, they opening was narrow enough there was actually something of a current, and Armitage took hold of the rudder, guiding it through a narrow opening in the cliff face, avoiding obstacles under the water only he could see, and in complete silence brought them to where a single old dock stood, weathered and covered in bird nests and dung. Behind it, up the cliff face was an old staircase, disappearing up above.

“Those are Kittiwakes,” said Pont flatly.

“They’ll only scream, it’s fine,” dismissed Armitage, starting up the engine again to guide them to the old dock.

“They shouldn’t be nesting on the dock, they’re cliff birds.”

“No one comes here, not since mother stopped you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned this into a colony.”

Still, Pont threw a line around one of the posts of the dock and tied them off as Armitage climbed out of the boat. “Alright there?” he asked Aberforth, who had his head between his knees to fend of the sea sickness.

“Space ships don’t rock so much,” said Kylo, climbing out easily, ignoring the birds shrieking around him _Kittiwaaaaake! Kittiwaaaaake!_ “It’s just sea sickness.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Aberforth once he was sure he could open his mouth without vomiting. But even then his brother stayed close to him.

“How long has it been since you came here?” asked Brendol Jr., speaking loudly to be heard over the birds as the five walked up the dock.

“Years. Not since I was eighteen,” said Armitage. “Don’t worry, the staircase is stone, it’s not going to fall apart.”

It was a long way up, surrounded by birds all calling out to each other _Kittiwaaaaake! Kittiwaaaaake!_ and by the time they reached the top the sea sickness had faded, and there before them were the ruins of the Academy. It was probably impressive once, but time had left its mark, covering it with vines and walls crumbling. The result was something that struck Aberforth, but in sadness rather than impressiveness. It was like seeing a great predatory animal injured and limping.

“We closed it off once everything came out about this place,” said Armitage. “No one but kids comes up here now, except us.”

“There might be some teenagers running around here,” added Pont. “Today they’re off school. So if you hear anyone talking or footsteps, just assume it’s kids.”

“What else would it be?” asked Brendol Jr.

“Ghosts.”

“Come on,” prompted Armitage, already leading the way.

The closer they came, the more Kylo’s brow furrowed, but that didn’t really mean anything. Armitage led them to a crumbling wall, and climbed in ahead of all of them. The inside was once a mess hall where all the cadets would go to eat. It was cavernous, empty, and the only noise was the wind. The tables were still in neat orderly lines but for one place, all shoved out of alignment to make a single open space. Somehow, that break in the order unsettled Aberforth.

“Hey, ‘Tage no one’s moved the tables back from when we were kids,” said Pont. “We shoved all these back to play a ghost summoning game, years and years ago.”

“How do you even remember that stuff?” asked Armitage as Kylo began to pace through the tables.

“I just do, I guess. I might be able to remember some of the games, if you give me time.”

“If we were children, I’d allow that.” Pont snickered to himself as Kylo found a door hanging off its hinges and peered through. Aberforth was trying to imagine this place alive, but he couldn’t. It was too abandoned, too old, nature was already starting to claim it back. And apparently his father had let children get _killed_ here.

The distant calls of _Kittiwaaaake! Kittiwaaaake!_ were eerie filtering into the building as they walked through the old dark hallways, and when a bird fluttered to her nest nearby in some rafter it startled Aberforth. “Steady on,” said Pont, hand clapping onto his shoulder. “It’s only a Pipit. Come on, ‘Tage, let’s show them your father’s old office.”

It was up a decaying set of stairs that groaned like a lost soul beneath their feet, and at the end of a long dark hallway, the door hanging off its hinges like a dislocated jaw. Dread filled Aberforth to see it, which didn’t make _sense._ That had been his father’s office, he had never been afraid of his father and had had no fear of his office. Had he not played under his father’s desk as a child back at Lightbridge, the boring old desk becoming a cave where he hid from his brother in hide and seek or where he imagined he was some grand explorer taking shelter on a mountainside?

But, the longer he lived with knowing what his father had done up here, the more he realized the father he knew was not the Commandant. And perhaps that allowed this feeling of dread as they approached it. Suddenly, Pont let out a low hoot behind them, and got Brendol Jr. reacting on instinct and throwing him to the ground with his arm wrenched up behind him for his trouble. Armitage started laughing to see it, leaning on the wall to support him.

“You do realize both of them are military, yes?” asked Kylo, arms folded next to Armitage.

“Next time, don’t try and sneak up on a General,” managed Armitage, watching Pont shamefacedly get to his feet as Brendol Jr. simply went ahead into the office.

The place looked like a particularly angry animal had gotten in there, everything was scattered about in disarray, the window was shattered and probably a few chairs too if the scattered pieces said anything. Their father’s office, absolutely destroyed. “When the New Republic came, they must have torn it apart,” said Brendol Jr. softly. “Looking for records or the like.”

“Probably,” agreed Armitage. When they glanced at him, he shrugged and said, “Remember, I was _four_ when you all left, I don’t actually know what happened. Superstition says it’s the ghosts. They’re supposed to be like sharks, and can smell blood to seek the one who killed them for revenge. So, they’re tearing the place apart to find father.”

“That’s why Ms. Halloran stopped us from coming up here and got ‘Tage that diving job,” added Pont. “She believes in the ghosts, and supposedly they could smell ‘Tage and come try to kill him for revenge because of shared blood.”

“I’m also fairly certain she disapproved of us playing games where we tried to summon the ghosts of murdered children. She says the entire town went into mourning when word got out about what father did, says that they watched all the funeral barges go out and didn’t even question it. I think she felt worse because she should have been the one asking because she was closest to him.”

“I still can’t believe he did that,” said Aberforth softly. “I never would have thought it. He was always…”

“I still want to think that that is propaganda against him, to discredit him,” agreed Brendol Jr. “He believed that the individual did not matter in the face of the greater society, but I would never have thought it meant the individual was _disposable._ ”

Pont was leaning in close to Armitage, but Aberforth still caught part of his whisper. “…leave them alone, I think,” he said, and quietly they left back out to the hallway, standing a ways away and talking. Kylo followed them, and Aberforth looked to his brother, who looked privately destroyed now that no one but his brother was there to see how he reacted to the idea that their father authorized the killing of children.

“Bren,” said Aberforth quietly, going to him.

“He sat here and covered up _murder_ ,” said Brendol Jr. “And then he came home and played with us. He allowed the children he was supposed to teach and train be killed. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“’Forth, he developed the ‘Trooper program we use today. Did he…do you think he tried it out here first?”

“I don’t know, Bren. I don’t know.”

And then, voice hushed and fearful, he asked, “Do you think mother knew?”

Aberforth said nothing, thinking back to that portrait they had seen of their father young and freshly promoted. How much blood did his father spill in war before he stopped thinking of it as horrific? How long before he looked at cadets and thought that one or two could die to further another along? Had his father in that painting yet looked at a child and think it would be acceptable for them to die under any circumstances, and worse a child in his charge?

And then the worst thought of them all. Were _they_ disposable in their father’s mind? Armitage clearly was, what about them?

Aberforth wanted to go back to space, leave these questions behind him, and get back to his job.

Tugging his brother out of the office, they found Pont there, Kylo and Armitage missing. “’Tage took him to go see the old docking bay. There’s no ships left, but apparently he wants to see it anyway,” said Pont. “Look, I’m sorry. Everyone here knows what happened, I mean we’ve told you, kids come up here to try and summon the ghosts and for them it’s just a bit of spooky fun. You didn’t know, he was your _dad,_ and we just tell you easy as you please what he did. I’m sorry about that. We should probably have realized you didn’t grow up knowing like we did.”

They walked silently through the empty complex of buildings, looking into long empty dormitories and classrooms that had been left untouched for years on end. Finally they reached where the cadets learned to fly, and saw Kylo and Armitage sitting side by side, dwarfed by the size of the room for all that they were both very tall men. This place could do that. Aberforth didn’t feel much like a colonel, and his brother didn’t look much like a general.

With both of the Hux brothers so clearly disturbed by the empty husk of the ruins, the five returned to the boat, their path marked by birds upset that they were so close to the nests. “Before we go anywhere,” said Armitage, looking the other four in the eye as he made to cast off. “If my mother finds out I’ve been here from any of you, I will find a way to make your life hell.”

“And how do you expect to do that?” asked Kylo, something near a smile on his face.

“I’ll figure something out.” And with that, he cast off the boat, leaving the Kittiwakes to decisively tell them off for ever coming before settling into their nests once more. The navigation back out was much the same as going in, riding the tide as it pushed through the narrow opening, before turning the engine back on, riding both machine and wind. Until the engine refused to turn back on.

“Sea grass, I think,” said Pont. “Wrapped around the propellers.”

“Of _course,_ ” sighed Armitage. “Well, we have two options. Wind, or I dive.”

“No good, we’ll get thrown against the cliffs if we try only wind going this way. I’ll toss down the anchor, you’ve got to dive.” And indeed, Pont dropped down the anchor, tugging at it to test if it held, while Armitage stripped down to his underthings. It was incredibly uncomfortable for both Brendol Jr. and Aberforth, but within moments he was diving off the side, sliding between the waves. “Don’t worry about him, he was raised in the ocean, he’ll be fine. Besides, this is only untangling the propellers, not freeing a panicked animal from a net.”

“Was the disrobing necessary?” asked Brendol Jr. faintly.

“Yes. What, you think he’d wear wet clothes with this wind? Sea women do their work entirely nude, you know, they only wear belts to hold their knives, and he was raised by them.”

It wasn’t that much longer that Armitage broke the surface of the water, but it was longer than either of the Hux brothers could hold their breath, and they had begun to worry. Still, Armitage climbed back aboard, sheeting water off his body as he did, pale as a fish and the skinny length of his body entirely on display as he said, “If ghosts were real, I’d think they tied the sea grass around just to be intentionally difficult. Go on, Pont, raise anchor, we can head out now.”

“Put some clothes on, I think you’re offending your brothers,” said Pont even as the engine started to push them through the water.

Even on the ocean, Armitage didn’t stumble much at all as he pulled his clothing back on, before taking a line and pulling the sail where he would rather it be. And even still his clothes stuck to him, the shirt sticking to his sides and wrapped tightly around his arms. And with his red hair wet and stuck to his head, Aberforth couldn’t help but remember their father’s portrait, and how his hair had looked just like it. Armitage had inherited their father’s coloring, while they inherited his legacy, it seemed.

When they arrived in Detherby again, one of the sailors always on the docks caught the line Armitage threw and tied them down, and gave Aberforth a pitying look for the sea sickness that plagued him. It was no short amount of time before he could move without fear of vomiting, and needed help getting onto the dock. He was never getting onto a vessel that small on any ocean ever again.

Armitage left to attend to his duties as captain, because the catch had been sold and he preferred to calculate wages one catch at a time apparently, and when he did Pont cheerfully asked them if they’d like to have dinner with him. Apparently he was going to open a new jar of home pickled vegetables. Out of politeness, they accepted.

Pont’s home was warm, welcoming, the pickles were indeed rather tasty, and by the time he finally let them leave, it was near full dark, and Kylo walked off without a word, away from Lightbridge. “Where does he go?” asked Aberforth idly.

“As long as he isn’t causing damage to anything, I’d let him go,” said Brendol Jr. “He tends to be less angry, that way.”

That would have been more comforting were they talking about a particularly foul tempered pet, not his brother’s fiancé.

“Bren? I think I’m going to go down by the ocean. I’d like to see it at night.”

“You won’t be able to see much of anything.”

“That’s rather the point. I’ll be up at Lightbridge soon.” And he turned back to the beaches and docks, breathing in the brine when he got there, unable to see the actual water, but listening to it whisper and breathe against the shore. He might not have seen an actual ocean in person until he was a teenager, but he had swiftly come to love them all the same. There was never a moment of silence, the air was always filled with noise of some sort.

With constant cloud cover, the nights were full and complete but for the weak lights of the moons managing to push through, the ocean disappeared into the dark of the night, the sound of it the only hint that it was there. It was raining too, but Aberforth realized that he only noticed it when it grew stronger. He hadn’t even been here that long, and suddenly he was just like all those around him.

Standing there on the beach in the dark, the ocean and the rain the only constants, Aberforth tried to let the conflict of who his father was slide from his mind. But the ruin of the Academy that people said was haunted by children sniffing out the blood of their murderer didn’t want to go. He supposed that explained why they had fled; with a new government looking through records someone might have figured it out. He wished his father had never so much of thought about it, or barring that, that he had never found out about it.

He was in the military, and because of that he had to deal with a lot of death, both of his own people and of those they fought against, but he had never allowed a child to be murdered simply to advance another. He had never encouraged a child to kill another. There was a part of him that was glad that his father was dead, so he would never have to look him in the eye knowing what he did now.

Dark thoughts belonged to the black ocean, he thought, and turned homewards, to Lightbridge, and to lighter thoughts.

The next day, while Aberforth was reading through the Talbot Portrait Gallery’s site with information about all the works in their collections, learning about the ancestors he had seen and the painters and one sculptor they had hired, Kylo came and found him, standing in front of him and staring him down. Slowly, Aberforth set aside the datapad, unsure what was going on.

“How invested are you in my and your brother’s marriage?” Kylo asked suddenly.

“I…did not help plan it, so not that much. Did my brother do anything to offend you or Leader Snoke?” he asked slowly.

“He has been the same as always.”

“Have _I_ done something to offend you or Leader Snoke?”

“No, Aberforth, you have been rather pleasant all things considered.”

“Right. If I may, why are you asking me this?”

“Because I would rather not be treated like a nuisance the rest of my life.”

A glimmer of a thought came to mind; Kylo and Armitage talking intently at the public house, Kylo being in good humor when Armitage questioned his mysticism, grinning when Armitage had skipped their boat like a pebble over the sandbar, falling silent and certainly not saying a word against it when Armitage had stripped down to go diving.

“You don’t happen to be interested in my _half-_ brother, are you?” said Aberforth, each word painful to say. “Because you know, you’re never going to be happy here if you even could stay, and he is never going to leave.”

“Everything takes from everything, but the old myths say the mudslide and the tidal wave are gods, and they take what they deem theirs in turn.”

“You can’t…if you _take_ him, he’s going to hate you. He’s a fisherman, he works on and in the sea, and I don’t think he’d want to leave it let alone by force.”

“I wouldn’t kidnap him,” dismissed Kylo.

“I hope not. But even if you asked him and if you did formally break off the engagement, are you willing to deal with what that would do to Armitage?”

“What do you mean?” only then did he seem to pause.

This was important. He wasn’t trying to save the marriage, but Kylo had a history of not thinking things all the way through, and there would be consequences. “If you break off the engagement with the elder son of Commandant Hux and take up with the bastard fisherman son of Commandant Hux, then people will talk. Mother especially, and you know how she talks about Rhodelind. Give it a few weeks, and the Halloran family is known to the whole galaxy as gold diggers who take advantage of the most influential person they can find. Even if you married him, that reputation would never go away.

“You’re Leader Snoke’s heir. When he dies, you will become Supreme Leader. The most ambitious thing Armitage has ever done is organize a strike and refuse to supply Talbot until they started paying fair prices. Do you really want to shove him onto a galactic political stage? He doesn’t have the preparation for the dangers those high ranking roles have, and with everyone turned against him from the start, he’d get no help and only knives in the back when he doesn’t know how to watch behind him. Someone from the Resistance could kill him easily, simply to get at you.”

“I would protect him,” protested Kylo, but it was weak and didn’t hold that much water.

“I don’t think you could be vigilant to every threat at every moment. And if your knights became his security detail then he’d never have a moment to himself and that would drive him mad, too. You saw how he and Mr. Tolbiac sailed off into the ocean, do you think he’d smile to hear he could never do that again? These are all things you would need to think about. I’m not telling you it’s impossible or anything, but your situation is complex, and your decisions can’t be made around yourself alone.”

“You won’t tell your brother about this conversation.”

“No, because _I_ don’t want to be the one telling him his fiancé was considering leaving him.”

“I will think on what you’ve said,” said Kylo, before turning and leaving as suddenly as he came, leaving Aberforth feeling exhausted behind him.

With a sigh, he simply took up his datapad and continued to read about how one of the painters hired practiced “aesthetic deformation” to make his subjects elegant even if it meant making the torso just slightly longer than was physically possible on a human. With luck his brother would never find out about the conversation he had just had. With luck, his half-brother wouldn’t be subjected to the wagging tongues of the galaxy at large.

Their time in Lightbridge was coming to an end, he would be back on the _Protector_ soon just as his brother and Kylo would return to the _Finalizer_. And that was probably safest for everyone, if they left this wet, quiet town with its haunted ruins on the cliffs behind.

Aberforth didn’t see Kylo the rest of the day, but Brendol Jr. did find the keys to the wine cabinet finally, and revealed racks and racks filled with blue wines, each carefully marked from each year it was made. It wasn’t quite custom, but they couldn’t help themselves, they chose a vintage at random and opened it, sharing a glass between the two of them.

Sywy wine had so little of a bouquet it was almost as if it was not there at all. The taste, however, was sweet and tangy and wanted to flow swiftly and easily as water did. Still, Aberforth made himself drink it slowly, savoring this wine he had heard so much about. He had never tasted anything quite like a Sywy berry, and even less like this wine.

“I think I’m going to miss this planet,” said Brendol Jr., looking out to where a proper rain was beginning. “It will be strange, going back to our ships and not hearing the rain anymore.”

“I’ll miss it too,” confided Aberforth. “And I think I’ll miss Armitage too.”

“When he and Rhodelind came to the funeral, I remember thinking I’d hate them. I don’t hate them.” That was as close to saying that even in their incredibly limited interactions Brendol Jr. had come to like their little half-brother.

Kylo had gone further than that, and Aberforth was more than a little worried for all their sakes.

It wasn’t until two days later that Kylo’s actions began to have consequences. Aberforth had just been coming home from a walk on the property when Rhodelind Halloran started up towards the house, hair sopping wet from her dives and fury on her face.

“Is Kylo Ren here?” she asked tersely.

“No, I think he went out,” said Aberforth. “And besides, he could strangle you without laying a finger on you, so I would suggest not confronting him.”

“I most certainly will. I was so concerned that my son doesn’t get hurt by you or your brother, I didn’t think about your brother’s fiancé!”

Ice filled Aberforth’s veins as he asked slowly, “What’s he done?”

Apparently, she told him in the sitting room, Kylo had been slowly getting involved with Armitage, and Rhodelind had only just found out about it when her son had spent the night on the _Ancrene Wisse_ and came home after the morning catch with a rather obvious mark on his neck. She wasn’t angry at her son, that much was apparent, this was all the rage she had ever felt for the Commandant just directed elsewhere. Her son’s heart was not a plaything for powerful men, she would not stand to let her family continue to be abused by those who looked at them and thought them nothing but rustics that could be used and left at whim.

“Ms. Halloran,” said Aberforth, “I am going to advise, for your own safety, that you not confront Kylo about this. The time we have been here is the longest he has gone without grievous harm to property or person, and I cannot in any good conscience let a civilian get hurt. I’ve talked to him about it when I became aware of it, I warned him that he needed to think the whole situation through, I didn’t know that he did not heed me.”

“I hope you’ll tell your brother about this. If Kylo is the sort of man to break his promises, your brother should know immediately.” There was hurt in that. In her eulogy, he remembered, she had spoken of how his father had broken promises to her. In a culture that allowed married couples to take paramours, perhaps those promises were just as important as marriage vows.

“Your son is a grown man, I think he can be trusted to navigate this on his own.”

“My son has never been taken in by a man so much more powerful than he. You wouldn’t know it, you have the rank, but there is something intoxicating in someone important recognizing you. We work with our hands, we are some of the lowest in the eyes of the galaxy, and a powerful man fancies himself in love with my son. You don’t think clearly when that’s happening.”

“Trust your son. He doesn’t seem the type to forget himself.”

“I know my son. I raised him. You didn’t know he existed until a few days ago.” And still, with perhaps more dignity than his own mother could manage, honed into a knife to open Rockfish, Rhodelind stood and left Lightbridge, slipping on her shoes and saying, “Make your decision about Sywy wine soon. The fruits will get overripe and drop off before long.”

There was silence in Lightbridge once she was gone, and Aberforth had always shielded his brother best he could, but there was no shielding him from the fact that his fiancé was thinking about leaving him for their half-brother who lived in complete obscurity. How would he tell him?

He was still trying to figure out how to broach the topic to his brother, who was upstairs reading through the information the Talbot Portrait Gallery made available about the portraits of their ancestors, when the bell (now no longer so dusty and strangled from the amount of use it was getting) rang. And when Aberforth opened the door, it was Armitage there, looking remarkably impassive but for the clenching of his fists at his side and a slight tightness around the edges of his face.

Rhodelind wasn’t wrong, the mark on his neck wasn’t very well hidden at all.

“This is a bit of an odd question,” said Armitage, voice purposefully sedated, “but has my mother come up?”

“Yes,” said Aberforth, not unkindly. “She left about an hour or so ago.”

“Oh. Well.”

“Armitage, I already knew.”

“You did?” that was apparently a surprise, and Aberforth hadn’t seen his half-brother so visibly surprised in the whole time they had known each other.

“Kylo asked me if I was invested in his engagement to my brother and told me that he was thinking of leaving him for you.” Perhaps he should relish seeing Armitage no longer looking so calm but rather uncertain and uncomfortable, but he simply couldn’t. “I don’t blame you, Kylo never thinks things all the way through. Come in, we have some tea.”

It was strange as ever to see Armitage in Lightbridge. There was a wildness in the shade of his eyes that was the wind that pushed them skipping over the waves, a strength in the wiry muscles of his arms that was the tangling of the flora that spilled over each other for the fertility of this wet planet, a paleness that spoke to the eternal clouds. Lightbridge didn’t have any of those qualities, it was as removed from the ocean as possible.

With steaming cups of tea steeping in front of them in the very sitting room Aberforth had spoken to Rhodelind in, Armitage didn’t make eye contact with him, just stared at the leaves unfurling in the hot water in front of them. “I know what it seems like,” Armitage finally said. “But it isn’t.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Aberforth again.

“Mother doesn’t either. She thinks I got swept up and forgot myself. I didn’t.” There was steel in his voice, as if challenging Aberforth to say otherwise.

“Kylo was probably the one who did. He doesn’t think things all the way through. When he told me, I reminded him what taking up with you would mean. I don’t think he considered it before.”

“I would be a liability. I’m a fisherman, not a soldier and I know that. I’d be an easy target, and someone would have to watch me at all times. I’d hate that, and I’d probably hate Kylo by the end. There’s an old saying on Arkanis. ‘A fish may love a bird, but where would they live?’”

“Kylo would twist that, speak of mudfish and pelagic birds.”

“But even mudfish must always go back to the water, and pelagic birds lay their eggs on the shore. I know his world and mine can’t match. When did you talk to him?”

“Two days ago.”

“He seemed out of sorts, last night. I think he knew our worlds weren’t meant for each other as well, and was trying to forget about it. He offered me the stars, but I’ve never seen them. Mother came up here in a rage she didn’t need to be in, last night was the end of it.”

“You don’t want it to be.”

“Not particularly. But I love my job, I love the ocean, I can’t love what I haven’t seen. I can’t leave to space and I’m not suited for the politics of the worlds. The most I do is lead strikes and listen to Mayor Linden flirt with my mother. I won’t lie to you, I love your brother’s fiancé. But I am the fish and he the bird. It had to end.”

Aberforth couldn’t pretend to know his half-brother, they only just met in the scheme of things, but Armitage wasn’t on the political stage and hadn’t needed to learn to hide thought and emotion. At least not so completely as Aberforth and Brendol Jr. had needed to. And there was stirrings of grief about Armitage, and heartbreak too.

“I won’t tell my brother until we’re off planet,” said Aberforth, making his little brother look up. “I don’t think he’ll be crushed by it, it’s an arranged marriage after all, but I’ll wait all the same.”

“Your mother hates mine because our father was involved with her at all.”

“Yes, but mother actually did love our father. She told us, she hated having to share his heart. My brother agreed to marry Kylo because he had no particular objections. It’s not what I would choose for him, but he won’t mourn sharing any of Kylo’s heart. In fact, I think you’re the one who’d have to be doing the sharing.”

“I thought I heard talking,” said Brendol Jr., stepping into the room. “Good afternoon, Armitage.”

“Afternoon,” said Armitage, immediately taking a deep drink of his tea so he wouldn’t have to talk.

“We were just talking, about how mother hates Rhodelind,” said Aberforth.

“What a charming conversation,” said Brendol Jr.

“I was saying don’t think mother would like to hear that I’ve invited our little brother in for tea, perhaps we could not mention this?”

“I didn’t plan on telling mother we got Armitage and Mr. Tolbiac to take us to the Academy either, I think I can forget to mention a cup of tea.”

“Sorry, do you want some?”

“I’ll make my own.” When their elder brother was gone, Armitage looked at Aberforth with silent thanks. Brendol Jr. returned soon enough, and they turned conversation to easier things, like the fact that Armitage had never once seen the stars with his own eyes, while the Hux brothers had been raised among them.

“I’ve seen holos,” dismissed Armitage. “It can’t be that different.”

“It certainly is,” said Aberforth.

“On other planets, sailors use stars to navigate,” said Brendol Jr. “How do you even know which direction you’re going out on the sea?”

“Compasses,” said Armitage flatly. “By the magnetic poles they can’t use them, they use sun stones. We don’t go sailing at night; that way leads to death.”

“It was evening when we came back the other day.”

“Evening, not night. And besides, we were close to the shore.”

Brendol Jr. and Armitage were bickering over it, and as Aberforth watched, a spot of dark caught his eye, and he turned to see Kylo standing in the doorway, barefoot and staring at Armitage. His face was pinched in sadness, and soon as he saw Aberforth, he turned and walked away silently.

Excusing himself and leaving his brothers to talk about whether or not it was a travesty that Arkanis’ skies never cleared, Aberforth went to find Kylo, sitting in the old nursery and staring out across towards the ocean. “So Rhodelind was furious, and Armitage wanted to keep us from finding out,” he said. “But I understand you’ve ended it?”

“He ended it,” said Kylo. “I’ll go quietly to marry your brother, don’t worry.”

“I never said I actively supported it. Frankly, I’m worried about you and my brother, I wonder how much you like each other.”

“I respect your brother, and that lasts longer than bursts of passion, I’ve been told.”

“Well, yes, I’ve heard that too. Kylo…you know I have to tell my brother if you don’t. I won’t say anything until we’re off planet, but you can’t marry him if you don’t tell him. He won’t be heartbroken, but he deserves to know.”

“Don’t say anything. I’ll tell him.”

“ _Before_ you get married.”

“I’ll tell him. Go back downstairs, Aberforth.”

He did as he was told, joining his brothers once more. Kylo’s broken heart was Kylo’s alone, he couldn’t ever pretend to be close enough to the Knight to say anything to him in comfort. Soon enough they’d be leaving this planet far behind them, and Talbot was huge compared to Detherby and even Talbot was entirely unknown to many. Armitage would be forgotten again, left to the ocean while they returned to the void.

That probably shouldn’t hurt as much as it did.

The last day they spent in Lightbridge Aberforth cooked a lunch of Rockfish soup, and took Brendol Jr. to talk to young Raala at Town Hall, who looked just about right to faint upon meeting him, while Mayor Linden nearly fell over himself to offer _General Hux_ something to drink. Kylo stayed up in the old empty house, throwing cloth over furniture and locking up rooms. He didn’t want to see Armitage, Aberforth thought to himself.

After nearly seeing the exact moment when the girl decided that she’d pursue politicks no matter what, they went to find Armitage, who would be home from the afternoon catch. He was at home they found, when he opened the door.

“Never thought I’d see both of you down here,” he said, waving them in and staring them down until they took off their shoes.

“We leave for Talbot tonight,” said Brendol Jr. “We’re to return to our ships before dawn tomorrow.”

“Oh. So you’ve come to say goodbye?”

“Yes. And to tell you to keep harvesting the Sywy fruit.”

“It only took you the entire time you were here to make a decision.” But it was said fondly. They had only been aware of Armitage’s existence for two weeks, but he was already allowed to tease them. The idea of leaving him in this forgotten little town almost hurt, but Aberforth still believed what he had told Kylo; Armitage would hate to leave, not to mention he would be in danger if he did.

“Armitage,” said Aberforth as their half-brother took them to a room lined with space heaters and evenly cut lengths of sea grass drying to be made into tea, pouring out sachets of his mother’s harvest for them. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“For the tea? I told you, it’s nothing, sea grass is a weed it’s no skin off our backs to give you some.”

“Well yes for that, but you made us far more welcome than you ever needed to. You taught me to cook a few meals, you took us to the Academy, and you told us where to find the portraits of our ancestors. You didn’t have to do any of that.”

“It was a little selfish,” admitted Armitage. “I wanted to hear more about father than what stories we tell here. I’m sorry I had to tell you what he did.”

“If the Academy ever was haunted by his victims, he’s in the ocean now for them to catch him,” said Brendol Jr. “Still, ‘Forth is right. You were welcoming even if it was for your own benefit, and we are very glad to have met you. Kylo as well, but he decided to do most of the locking up of the estate today.”

Kylo was far more than simply “glad to have met” Armitage, but Aberforth had promised not to say a word and Armitage just turned back to measuring out the sea grass tea as he said, “I was glad to meet him too.”

“When we first arrived here, I kept thinking about how empty Lightbridge is, and how wet the planet is. But now I’ll miss it. Would you object if we ever came back? I know how Detherby thinks of us, I don’t want to hurt you if we take up Lightbridge again.”

“I’m not a Hux,” said Armitage. “Even if you stayed, I wouldn’t be. Bastards follow the condition of the mother. To the eyes of everyone around here, I’m a Halloran, not a Hux. You could live permanently up in Lightbridge, hire staff and everything, and no one would look poorly on me for it.”

“But would _you_ object?”

Armitage was silent a long moment, tying closed the sachets distractedly before he said, “No. So far in my life, I knew Lightbridge to be empty and something like the Academy. It was a place where only the dead lived, what with all the portraits. And now it will be strange seeing it closed again, now that you’ve been up there. If you came back, I wouldn’t object. Maybe I could teach you to sail.” The sachets of tea he gave were not insubstantial, and each leaf could be used multiple times, so this would last them a long, long time. It was a last gift, for all that Armitage had said that they kept making requests of him.

“Take care of yourself,” said Brendol Jr.

“Don’t get yourselves blown up,” countered Armitage.

They weren’t hugging types, even their mother refrained from such gestures, but in the back of his mind, Aberforth was wondering if he couldn’t donate a sturdier droid to the docks to help fix engines, or if Mayor Linden would say no to some general donation to the town. That was a distant gesture, one that didn’t require him to be there himself, that was what he was comfortable with.

It was a few hours later that Aberforth stood in front of the window of the shuttle that would be taking him back to the _Protector_ and stared down at the silver marble that was Arkanis. It looked so small, the clouds so complete, there was no way to look at it and know the single supercontinent, to know the musty flavor of Bos milk, the Disi fruit that tasted like a star’s corona, that particular smell of fertile ground, the eternity of the rain, the birds screaming _Kittiwaaaake! Kittiwaaaake!_ , the Sea Women husking Rockfish or harvesting sea grass, the rooms and rooms in a portrait gallery filled with his ancestors.

But from that small silver marble of sky colored water, his half-brother had never seen the stars, nor the moons that spun in intoxicating patterns around the planet, playing with the water below. He had never seen a nebula glowing all the colors of creation, never saw a tiny pulsar just ten miles across drain a giant of a star, never felt the sheer heat of a blue giant star.

As the shuttle jumped into hyperspace, Aberforth didn’t stumble. There was no air resistance in space, and he had grown up in it that nothing about travel surprised him anymore. Arkanis disappeared behind him, and Aberforth turned back his life and his job, leaving his little brother behind him, where he wanted to be.

His father always said the individual’s wishes didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but that didn't mean they couldn't be acknowledged.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://starkilleraflame.tumblr.com/)


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